


Code Blue

by saltsmoke



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/F, Grey’s Anatomy AU, Jefferson Isn’t Evil, No Storm in Arcadia Bay, Portland Area
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2019-08-02 03:23:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16297271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltsmoke/pseuds/saltsmoke
Summary: Chloe Price, a surgical intern with ambitions that seem impossible to reach, and Max Caulfield, a scrub nurse with a love for the job, cross paths one night after a stressful encounter that neither of them thought would lead to something so sweet. Their jobs demand their lives and neither are willing to step back from the thrill of saving lives.





	1. Interns

_ If there's just one piece of advice I can give you, it’s this; when there’s something you really want, fight for it, don’t give up no matter how hopeless it seems. And when you’ve lost hope, ask yourself, 10 years from now, you’re gonna wish you gave it just one more shot because the best things in life, they don’t come free. _ __  
  
  
  
Chloe Price, to say the very least, was intimidated. She thought this would be a walk in the park. Med school was easy enough, why couldn’t a surgical internship be? Chloe figures with Rachel by her side, anything was possible. Except she’s five minutes into her first day as an intern and she’s already getting yelled at. Authority figures were already a problem with her and she’d learned to keep her mouth shut through high school and then college and then med school and now she was finding it very hard to keep that up.    
  
Truth be told, she never thought she’d make it this far. Joyce was nothing but supportive after Chloe threw herself into her studies after her father died. There was a period where she gave up and slacked off; dying her hair and getting a tattoo because she needed control over something in her life. Joyce was nothing but supportive then, too. She did the best she could for a single mother, taking up extra shifts at the diner when Chloe went into college and between the two of them working towards a common goal, there was a sizable dent in her two hundred thousand dollar student loan debt. Sizable meaning tiny and dent meaning a grain of sand off the beach. Of course Rachel was fine. Modeling helped her pay her way and she was resting on the throne of no debt to worry about.    
  
Chloe spared a glance at her friend as they walked past the nurse’s station. Rachel looked calm and collected but her brow was furrowed in concentration as she flipped through the trauma protocol booklet they all took when they met their assigned surgical resident. Chloe, meanwhile, was fumbling with the pager she was trying to hook on her waistband.    
  
They’d been taken on a quick tour of every area they needed to see before returning to the fourth floor and speaking of their surgical resident, Dr. Chase was yelling again. Victoria Chase, the main person that Chloe’s anger was focused on at the moment, started to speak again. Maybe speak was an understatement. Shouting? Yelling? Using her outside voice? Chloe looked at each of her fellow interns and tried to recall their name. Geek boy was Warren Graham, skater boy was Justin Williams, religious girl was Kate Marsh. They all looked probably just as scared as she did while Dr. Chase yelled about how her idiot interns couldn’t do anything without getting sidetracked by the thrill of being in one of the best surgical programs in the country.    
  
“Rounds, people! Every morning, don’t be late. If you’re late, you’re on scut and you’ll be there everyday until I’m sure you’ll never be late again, understood?” The blonde came to a stop and turned around when no one answered, lifting her brows and looking at each one of them like she expected something. There was a chorus of agreements a second later. Dr. Chase stared for a moment longer before nodding, “Since day one, since you started med school, you were taught to only trust yourself because that’s what a surgeon has to do. You all are not surgeons today. You’re babies and it’s my job to raise you. You have the potential to be great surgeons, but today, you are not great surgeons. You are not surgeons, you are not great. You are learning, that is your job. Your job is to not screw anything up. Your job is to observe so that one day you can be great surgeons.”   
  
They were all quiet when she stopped talking, all of them standing there with a vaguely disturbed look on their faces before Dr. Chase’s pager went off.    
  
“When I move, you move. Let’s go,” Dr. Chase looked down at the device and was off again, leaving the interns scrambling in her wake. They followed her into a room with a young man and worried parents and all but threw the chart into Chloe’s hands when Dr. Madsen entered the room with Dr. Wells.    
  
_ Oh, great. A renowned cardiothoracic surgeon and the chief of surgery on the first day, _ Chloe thought.    
  
“Present,” Dr. Chase ordered.    
  
Chloe fumbled for a moment before opening the chart, “Evan Harris, eighteen years old in for congenital hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and is scheduled for a heart transplant,” she closed the chart and tucked it under her arm.    
  
Dr. Madsen stepped forward and shook everyone’s hand before stuffing his hands in his pockets and turning to the interns.    
  
“Can anyone tell me what that means?” Dr. Madsen looked between each of them before settling on Chloe, “Dr..”   
  
“Uh.. Price, sir.”   
  
“Dr. Price, can you tell me what that means?”   
  
“Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is the abnormal thickening of the left ventricle, the main pumping chamber,” Chloe paused and opened the chart, doing a once over of the labs that were already taken, “because the condition is congenital, the ventricle is thickening quickly and the last labs and scans showed that the chamber isn’t pumping enough blood because of the enlargement of the heart so a transplant is the best and safest option.”   
  
Dr. Madsen allowed silence to fill the room before clearing his throat with a slight smile, “I see you’re prepared. What tests would you do for pre-op?”   
  
“Echocardiogram, electrocardiogram, MRI, and a blood test,” Chloe said unsurely even though she knew she said all the right things, mainly because half the tests had already been done and in were in the chart.    
  
“Good. Do the labs, do the scans and schedule an MRI, page me when you have the results,” Dr. Madsen spoke quickly before turning back to parents, “I understand that you know the complications of a procedure this extreme. There can be residual bleeding, infection, even blood clots. With any surgery there is a certain risk of death, a transplant is considered more dangerous than other procedures, especially a heart transplant. We will watch your son closely after the surgery to avoid any post-op complications. If there are any complications during surgery, I’ll send someone out to update both of you.”    
  
Dr. Madsen nodded once and shook the parents’ hands before excusing himself and leaving the room, but not before shooting a nod at Chloe.    
  
Dr. Chase looked annoyed but Chloe wasn’t very surprised. She could hear the other interns whispering behind her as they filed out of the room and into the hall.    
  
“Price, since you managed to not screw that up, you’ll have the chance of doing something productive today. The rest of you, follow me.”    
  
Chloe watched as they left, shooting Rachel a nervous smile when her friend looked over her shoulder to give her a thumbs up before rounding the corner. With the rest of the group gone, Chloe was suddenly overcome with the realization that she had no idea what the hell she was doing.    
  
Within the next hour, Chloe had taken blood successfully and handed it in for testing and done both cardiograms and was waiting on the results. She was currently pushing the hospital bed towards the MRI machine and because she seemed to have gotten lost somewhere along the way, was fuming about it.    
  
“Is this your first day or something?” Evan said from in front of her, “Because I’ve been in this hospital a lot and we aren’t heading towards the MRI room.”   
  
“Shut up,” she grumbled, coming to a stop a few seconds later. Chloe ran her hand through her hair before sighing, “Okay, fine. Tell me where it is.”   
  
Chloe heard a laugh before the directions followed and she was moving Evan into the machine soon enough after that. She walked out and went into the observation room and waited for the test to start. She relaxed into the chair until the image started to appear, at which point she sat up and leaned closer to the monitor.    
  
“The outflow tract is barely open, there’s no way he should be talking right now, let alone alive,” Chloe looked from the monitor to the boy on the other side of the glass before getting up and paging Dr. Madsen. The surgeon came in a few minutes later and huffed as he bent down to look at the image.    
  
“Have you ever seen a left ventricle reconstruction procedure, Dr. Price?”    
  
“No, sir.”   
  
“Do you want to?”    
  
“Y-yes?”    
  
“Explain the procedure to me.”   
  
“Uhm.. Well, you’d put the kid on cardiopulmonary bypass and once the heart is empty and stopped, you’d take it out and replace with the new heart.”   
  
“I’m looking for a little more detail, Dr. Price.”   
  
“Oh, yeah. The incision would be made starting just below the Adam’s apple down to the beginning of the navel. You’d split the sternum and put the heart on bypass and then take the heart out. You’d put the new heart in and do anastomosis on the vessels and take the heart off bypass and shock it to restart the heartbeat. Watch for any leaks and if there’s none, use wires to sew the sternum back together and close with sutures or staples and put in a chest tube.” Chloe looked at him and she could tell by the look on his face that she sounded like a robot.    
  
Dr. Madsen emitted a strained laugh at that and straightened, “I’ll send a resident to prepare him for surgery. Stay and observe so you know how to do it next time and then scrub in. You can observe from the back. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go tell Evan’s parents that we’re taking him into surgery.”    
  
“Thank you, sir.”    
  
The doctor nodded at her before departing and Chloe wasted no time getting Evan back to his room and letting the resident she didn’t recognize prepare him for surgery. The resident was nice enough and explained everything as she went along and let Chloe take Evan up to the operating room. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t feel giddy at least a little bit. She was giddy in the elevator and down the hall and into the operating room. She was giddy until Dr. Madsen walked in and informed the patient that surgery was starting in just a few minutes.    
  
Chloe watched as they put Evan under and didn’t tear herself away until Dr. Madsen began addressing her.    
  
“Dr. Price, we’re gonna step out and let these fine people prep our patient,” he laid a hand on Chloe’s shoulder and directed them both out of the room and into the scrub room.    
  
“What’s your name?” He asked as he grabbed a mask and put it on before grabbing a new bar of soap and began washing his hands, “Your first name?”   
  
“Chloe.”   
  
“Listen, Chloe. This is the first surgery you’re going to see up close, it’ll be memorable. You’ll remember it for the rest of your life,” Dr. Madsen said as he finished and held his arms up. He moved over to the door and stepped through as it slid open, waiting before entering the operating room, “When you walk through this door, Dr. Price, your career begins.”   
  
Chloe stood still for a few seconds after Dr. Madsen left and blew out a nervous breath before following his footsteps with putting a mask on and washing her hands. She counted the seconds until she was sure she’d done it long enough before stepping through the sliding door and into the operating room. She was given a gown and gloves even though she would be nowhere near the body and after she was clad in the sterile linens, she stepped behind a group of others and watched as Dr. Madsen asked for a 10-blade. Chloe caught a glare from Dr. Chase when she took her place.    
  
“Okay, people. We’re going to start with what, Price?”    
  
Chloe froze for a split second before stepping forward to answer, “A median sternotomy.”   
  
“Correct,” Dr. Madsen spared her a glance before returning to the patient and taking a breath. Dr. Chase looked even more annoyed with that, at least from what Chloe could read by just her eyes. Dr. Madsen pressed the blade to Evan’s chest and began to slice downwards, towards his diaphragm.    
  
  
_ Make a plan. Set a goal. Work toward it. But every now and then, look around. Drink it in, cause this is it. It might all be gone tomorrow. _ __  



	2. Crashing

_ We do our very best, but sometimes it's just not good enough. We buckle our seat belts, we wear a helmet, we stick to the lighted paths, we try to be safe. We try so hard to protect ourselves, but it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. Cause when the bad things come, they come out of nowhere. The bad things come suddenly, with no warning. But we forget that sometimes that's how the good things come too. _ __  
  
  
  
They were almost four hours into the surgery when the first complication happened. Evan was coming off bypass when Dr. Madsen noticed bleeding coming from the sutures connecting a pulmonary vein to the atrium. He noticed it only a second before the bleed turned into a tear. Chloe wasn’t close but her height gave her a good vantage point to see that blood was flooding around the heart.    
  
There was a moment where everyone held their breath, where everyone standing in the operating room froze.    
  
Dr. Madsen was yelling, shouting at anyone who spoke to him. He was shouting at everyone to shut up when they tried talking to him and he was shouting at everyone to get him what he needed. The doctor was cursing under his breath as he struggled to throw a stitch in the tear. It was bleeding too quickly and the suction wasn’t quick enough to give him a clear surgical field.    
  
Chloe’s heart was racing. Her mind already went to the worst case scenario. What if this kid died? He was only eighteen. He had a whole life to live, he had a whole future that he probably hadn’t figured out yet and would probably screw up, but it was one he deserved to have the privilege of figuring out and later screwing up. Chloe’s instincts surged forward and she would’ve kept her mouth shut if this was a situation she knew nothing about, but she knew about it. She had textbooks and articles committed to memory. Everything she needed, she had.    
  
Chloe took a step forward and looked between Dr. Madsen and the monitors, “Put him back on bypass and repair the tear. You’ll won’t be able to fix it in time if you don’t.”   
  
Dr. Madsen looked up, his hands never ceasing movement. He thought it over for a moment with a furrowed brow before straightening and turning to look over his shoulder. He instructed the nurses to put the patient back on bypass and stepped away from the table to breathe. He looked at Chloe and gave a nod, one she assumed meant she wouldn’t have her ass laid out for yelling at an attending on her first day as an intern.    
  
She stepped back and let out a breath of her own before looking up at the gallery. The other interns from her group were sitting there watching and she could see the smirk Rachel wore from where she was standing. Chloe smiled behind the mask before looking forward.    
  
Dr. Madden stepped forward and began pulling out the lap pads he used for the bleeding once the kid was successfully put back on bypass and huffed. Chloe could see the sweat gathering on his face and how his scrub cap was trapping some of the moisture.    
  
“Dr. Price, would you like to hold a clamp for me?” Dr. Madsen asked without ever looking up. Chloe sputtered a ‘yes’ and stepped forward, looking down at the heart in awe. It was the first one she’d seen that was inside a living person. They’d practiced over and over on cadavers throughout med school but this is the first time she’d ever been up close to a live one. This was the first time she’d ever seen the inside of a body of a living person, actually. Chloe stared down at it, her eyes flickering between each part of the heart while she mouthed the anatomy of it.    
  
Dr. Madsen cleared his throat and looked at Chloe, smiling behind his mask, “Dr. Price?”   
  
Chloe never heard him, she was too busy remembering everything there was to know about a human heart. Dr. Madsen laughed quietly and shifted his weight to his other foot, “Chloe.”   
  
That got Chloe to break from her haze and look up at him. It was obvious she was smiling from the way her eyes crinkled in the corners. Dr. Madsen pointed out the clamp she was to hold and she whispered an apology to Dr. Chase when she replaced her in the spot across from Dr. Madsen. The resident looked angry and Chloe knew she wouldn’t be punished by the attending but she couldn’t help but fear the wrath of Dr. Chase.    
  
Chloe wrapped her hand around the handle of the clamp and prayed to every god she knew of to keep her hand from shaking from the excitement.    
  
“You good, Price?”   
  
“Yes, sir. Just excited,” Chloe knew she sounded like a kid in a candy store but couldn’t bring herself to care enough to stop.    
  
“I was, too. My intern year, it was a wild ride but if I had to pick a year in my career that was the best, I’d pick my intern year.”   
  
“Really?”    
  
“Really,” he nodded and released a breath, “3-0 silk, please. Anyway, it was my best year. It’s the year for learning and man, did I learn. It was my third day and I was on a neuro case, the guy was in a car accident. It was a head-on collision and the guy wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and was thrown from the car. He came into the ER with a piece of glass lodged in his head. The guy was wide awake. He was talking and laughing and he was lucid. He passed every neurological exam we do on patients with a head trauma.”   
  
He paused and did a few stitches before continuing.    
  
“We did an MRI, a CT, too many x-rays. The scans were crazy. The glass missed the major parts of the brain in the left hemisphere. His speech and memory was intact so our next move was to figure out how the hell to get it out except the glass was broken off from the windshield and had a serrated edge, so we had to be extremely careful.”   
  
“How’d you get it out?” Chloe furrowed her brows, trying imagine herself in that situation and how she’d react and what her own game plan would be.    
  
“We didn’t. For a day and a half, we left the damn thing in. He had other injuries, internal bleeding and a heart problem that caused the accident in the first place. He went through four surgeries before the one to get the piece out. You’d think it’d be simple, it wasn’t an axe or anything and you’d think we’d have figured it out quicker because we were increasing the chance of an infection every minute we left it in, bu—”   
  
“So why did you?” Chloe asked, clearing her throat afterwards, “Leave it in, I mean.”   
  
“Well, mostly because he had full neurological function and we hadn’t come to a conclusion on how to remove it. No reason to rush the process and make a mistake that could leave him without the ability to speak if he was fine for the time being,” Dr. Madsen finished the last suture before going over the previous ones, making sure they looked good with the hope that none of them would leak again. With that done, he moved on to the vein and worked at reattaching it to the atrium.    
  
“Did he end up okay?”   
  
“No,” Dr. Madsen stopped to look at Chloe before resuming his work, ”we took him into surgery and it was hard because we had to pull the glass out at the same angle it went in, but we pulled it out. The serrated edge looked like it hadn’t cut anything but when we were getting ready to close, we noticed a bleed. Of course the bleed turned into something bigger and the brain started to swell so the surgeon performed a craniotomy to relieve the pressure. I’ll never forget how much blood came out when he pulled off the skull flap.”   
  
The operating room was completely silent, as was the gallery. Everyone was listening to the story as it took a turn for the worst. Dr. Madsen continued his work and Chloe continued holding the clamp and Dr. Chase no longer looked like she was ready to murder someone.    
  
“It turned out to be an aneurysm. The glass more or less clipped it, for lack of a better term, and when we pulled it out, it ruptured. It was so small, Dr. Price, that it hadn’t even showed up on the MRI or CT we did. He died on the table and it was the first time I’d ever called time of death.” Dr. Madsen took a deep breath and looked up, his eyes making their way around the room. Everyone was watching him, all of them silent. Hearing a surgeon talk about their losses, it was terrible. Chloe knew every surgeon had a person they carried with them. Someone they killed from making a mistake or someone they saved when the chance of survival was next to zero. Chloe knew she’d have a story like that to tell someday, and she hoped it wouldn’t be on her third day.    
  
“You consider that your best year, though?”   
  
“I do,” he stated confidently, “I learned that day that being a surgeon would be one of the hardest things I’d ever do in my life, but that it would be worth it because we lost that patient, but I knew we’d save others.”   
  
Chloe stayed quiet after that and let him finish his work, occasionally stealing glances at Dr. Madsen or even Dr. Chase. Sometimes she just looked at different spots in the OR.    
  
Dr. Madsen finished and sighed, pausing to send Dr. Chase out to update the parents. She didn’t look at Chloe before she left and Chloe didn’t dare to look her either. The doctor clamped the tube for bypass and watched the heart closely.    
  
“Come on, come on, come on,” she heard Dr. Madsen whisper from across the table. When he saw there was no leak, he breathed a sigh of relief and smiled, “Alright, we’re back in business. Let’s shock it and see if we actually did it right.”   
  
Chloe moved the clamp when Dr. Madsen shocked the heart once, and then twice, and waited for a stable heartbeat. Chloe counted twelve seconds before they got a rhythm.    
  
“We have a sinus rhythm, doctor,” a nurse said to Dr. Madsen. He smiled behind his mask and put the paddles away before looking at the surgical clock. Chloe looked as well, surprised to find that it was just past the fifth hour.    
  
“Goes by quickly, doesn’t it?” Madsen asked her with a laugh. Chloe nodded and turned back to the patient and huffed, closing time. Chloe hadn’t even noticed that Dr. Chase was back until she turned away from the clock.    
  
“It’s the excitement. That high you felt earlier from even being close to an open patient. Is that why you became a surgeon?”    
  
“No,” Chloe said, swallowing the ball that formed in her throat. She could see the question on Dr. Madsen’s face without him having to ask it, “I did it for my dad. He died when I was kid; car accident. I wasn’t there for it, but I can remember what it felt like. I can remember what it felt like to hear that he was dead. I remember how much it hurt. I remember how everything seemed a little more empty knowing he didn’t exist in the world anymore. I just— I guess I became a surgeon because I don’t want anyone else to feel the way I did. I guess.. I guess I’m just trying to be someone’s hero because no one was mine.”   
  
Dr. Madsen only nodded when she finished speaking, instead he chose to put all his attention into sewing the sternum back together with wires. Chloe pulled the clamps out one by one when they began to interfere with him closing until he began closing the incision with surgical staples. He put in a chest tube last before clearing his throat and stepping away from the table. He took off the gloves and gown and pulled his mask off before leaving the OR altogether. Chloe repeated his actions and exited the room, removing the scrub cap from her head before running a hand through her hair. She closed her eyes and rolled her neck, trying to work the knot out of her shoulder by stretching afterward.    
  
“Hey, rockstar,” Chloe smiled at the voice and opened her eyes to find Rachel standing in front of her.   
  
“Hey, yourself. I figured Dr. Doom would have you busy doing charts or something,” Chloe tucked the scrub cap in her pocket and moved to lean against the wall.    
  
“She did, and I did the ones that she gave me already. Dr. Doom, huh? I like it. Maybe that’s too nice of a nickname, though,” Rachel smiled.    
  
“Eh, maybe. Oh well, not like it’s gonna make her hate us any more than she already does,” Chloe shrugged and watched as the other surgeons exited the operating room, “What’s with her, anyway? What the hell is her problem that she hates us on site?”    
  
“Fuck if I know. I’m surprised she’s a surgeon. I thought surgeons were compassionate and kind. She the queen bitch of this hospital.”   
  
“Sh, sh, sh,” Chloe whispered when Dr. Chase came into the hall. She shot the both of them a glare with narrowed eyes before shaking her head.    
  
“Do I have to tell you two to do something or do you plan on getting off your asses at some point today?” Dr. Chase asked with hostility dripping from her words.    
  
The pair rolled their eyes almost in sync and pushed off the wall, making their way down the hall towards the nurse’s station.    
  
“Does she not know I just stood almost five and a half hours in surgery or is she too much of a bitch to notice?” Chloe whispered and laughed at the face Rachel made before taking Evan’s chart and updating it.    
  
Chloe was half way through her post-op notes when Dr. Madsen approached her with the chief at his side and Dr. Chase behind them with her arms crossed. She looked up when they stopped and was worried for a split second before seeing the smiles both men wore.    
  
“Dr. Madsen here tells me you gave sound advice in the OR earlier,” Dr. Wells said with a small smile. Chloe only nodded and flipped the chart closed before turning her body towards the small group.    
  
“She did, sir. It’s only been a day but I think she’s one that’s promising,” Dr. Madsen mentioned and Chloe couldn’t help the small ego boost.    
  
“Well, you might not know this, Dr. Price, but the attendings and I pick out an intern to do a solo surgery on their second day and Dr. Madsen here has already advocated for you. I just came to tell you to keep up the good work,” Dr. Wells finished and patted Chloe’s shoulder before leaving. Dr. Madsen did the same and went off with another doctor who asked for his attention.    
  
Chloe looked at Dr. Chase and sighed, dropping her gaze to the floor.    
  
“You’re still a nobody, Price. No intern that’s been chosen has actually been able to do it by themselves,” Dr. Chase said with a sneer and Chloe almost laughed from how childish it looked.    
  
“Yes, ma’am.” Chloe whispered while Dr. Chase stalked off.    
  
Chloe went through the rest of her day without so much stress, she helped Dr. Madsen brief Evan’s parents on his surgery and the conditions that arose and how they’d monitor him post-op carefully and constantly. After that was finished, she spent an hour or two in the skills lab and met up with Rachel and the other interns for lunch. It was an experience, to say the least. She’d learned that Kate needed to speak up more and she was smarter than she gave herself credit for and she learned that Warren needed to just shut up sometimes about all the science because they all went to med school and he wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know.    
  
She spent the rest of the day and even some hours into the night updating charts and running labs and getting scans. It was a quarter past midnight when she found a gurney in an empty hall to sleep on. She had just fallen asleep when Rachel appeared in front of her.    
  
“What do you want, Rachel?” Chloe groaned and rolled over to face the wall, internally sighing when Rachel forced Chloe closer to said wall so she could sit on the edge of the gurney.    
  
“Nothin’. Just bored, been doing charts all day and I actually think my fingers will cramp up and fall off if I ever hold a pen again.”    
  
“Great, don’t care. Tired,” she mumbled and tried to fall back asleep.    
  
“Me, too. Except Dr. Doom is on a warpath right now and is ready to kill any intern she finds sleeping. Which is why I’m here warning you not to sleep.”   
  
Chloe lifted her head and hit her forehead against the wall softly but repeatedly. She heard Rachel laugh before tugging on her hair until she stopped. They both started to laugh when Chloe turned to lay on her back.    
  
“We’re gonna survive this, right?”   
  
Rachel never answered her, she didn’t have the chance. Both of their pagers went off and they both grabbed them to look.    
  
“Shit,” Rachel whispered as she stood up, “Chase paged us to the ER. Big trauma.”   
  
Chloe groaned and stood up, following Rachel down hall and to the elevators as she stuffed the pager in her pocket. They were met immediately with yelling when they got off the elevator and both rushed to put trauma gowns and gloves on.    
  
“Listen, people! You do what I say and don’t get in anyone’s way!” Dr. Chase yelled before leading them into the ER. Chloe didn’t know what to look at first. There were so many people and blood everywhere. There had to be fifteen people in there.    
  
“What the hell happened?” Chloe wondered out loud.    
  
“Apartment building caught on fire,” Warren said from somewhere to her left.    
  
Chloe was about to ask another question when Dr. Morgan wheeled a gurney with a man with a metal rod sticking out of his abdomen into one of the trauma rooms. Dr. Chase gave everyone their assignments and told Chloe to follow the guy with the rod, which she did happily.    
  
The trauma room was utter chaos but she couldn’t help the rush she was feeling.    
  
“Where can I help?” she asked over the yelling.    
  
“Who the hell are you?” Dr. Morgan asked while he tended to the laceration that stretched across the patients entire abdomen.    
  
“Chloe Price, I’m an intern,” she said and moved to his side, handing him instruments as he asked for them.    
  
“First day, huh? I’m Will Morgan, nice to meet you. Hand me a scalpel,” Chloe nodded and handed him one, watching as he counted down to the fifth intercostal space before cutting and inserting a chest tube. Just when he got it in, the heart monitor started beeping.    
  
“V-tach!”   
  
“Get me a crash cart! Where are the paddles?” Chloe stepped back and stayed out of the way while Dr. Morgan got the paddles and pressed them to the guys chest.    
  
“Charge to 300. Clear!” Morgan pressed the buttons and Chloe watched the guy’s body lurch from the shock.    
  
The monitor did change. The man’s heart was beating too fast a moment ago and now it wasn’t beating at all.    
  
  
  
_ When do you throw in the towel? Admit that a lost cause is sometimes just that? There comes a point when it all becomes too much. When we get too tired to fight anymore. So we give up. That's when the real work begins. To find hope where there seems to be absolutely none at all. _ __  



	3. Call It

_ It doesn't matter how tough we are. Trauma always leaves a scar. It follows us home, it changes our lives. Trauma messes everybody up. But maybe that's the point. All the pain and the fear and the crap. Maybe going through all that is what keeps us moving forward. It's what pushes us. Maybe we have to get a little messed up, before we can step up. _ __  
  
  
  
Chloe was stuck, frozen in place like she was up in the OR. Her brain was telling her to move, to do anything, really. Her muscles wouldn’t react, they wouldn’t listen. The room smelled of burnt flesh and it only got worse every time the patient was shocked. Somewhere in the middle of everything, Chloe’s instincts went haywire but still, her feet wouldn’t move. She couldn’t bring them to.    
  
“Price!” Dr. Morgan’s voice pulled her from her thoughts and it was just enough to make the world move at a normal pace again, “Come here, I need another set of hands.”    
  
Chloe moved quickly and positioned herself on the right side of the patient, exactly where Morgan told her to be.    
  
“Okay, you’re gonna do a thoracotomy,” Chloe lifted both brows and turned to look at the attending.    
  
“A what? I don’t know how to,” the words came out rushed, fear and adrenaline running through her when she felt a scalpel being pressed into her palm.    
  
“You’re here to learn, so learn,” Dr. Morgan grabbed the rib spreaders, ready to hand them over when Chloe needed them, “You’re gonna have to crack his chest so count to the fifth intercostal space and make a skin deep incision, okay?”   
  
Chloe nodded and looked at her hands, willing them to stop shaking. She was nervous, it was hard not to be. This was basically the first the time she had a scalpel in her hand. This was  _ actually _ the first time she’d be cutting into someone that was alive— kind of.    
  
“Price, we only have a few minutes before this guy croaks, you need to do something,” she heard Dr. Morgan say from beside her. Chloe took a breath and closed her eyes before opening them with a surge of confidence.    
  
She used her left index finger to count down to the fifth intercostal space before placing the scalpel where her finger used to be. She cut down towards the scapula until the incision was long enough. Chloe handed the scalpel off and asked for scissors before cutting through the intercostal muscle. Dr. Morgan pressed the rib spreaders into her hand before she asked and Chloe was quick to put them in place. Once she could see the heart, she could see the trauma to it.    
  
“It’s bluish and looks swollen,” Chloe mumbled, shaking her head lightly, “Tamponade?”   
  
Morgan only nodded and handed her a smaller pair of scissors. Chloe took them and made a small cut in the pericardium and used her finger to do a blunt dissection to relieve it. She handed the scissors off before looking into the chest cavity.    
  
“Shit, uh..” Chloe straightened and turned to look at Dr. Morgan, “There’s a rupture in the right atrium, what do I do?”   
  
“You know what to do.”   
  
“I really don’t. I really don’t know what to do.”   
  
“Breathe, Price. Think,” Dr. Morgan waited, sneaking a look at the heart monitor in the process, “He’s got a pulse now but it’s weak, what are you gonna do?”   
  
Chloe stopped, holding her hands in front of her while she closed her eyes and tipped her head down. Her mind was moving too fast and she could barely keep up. The constant beeping from the monitor wasn’t helping either.    
  
“You’re runnin’ out of time,” Morgan said and clicked his tongue.    
  
“Okay, okay,” Chloe opened her eyes and held her hand out, “arterial forceps.” Once they were placed in her hand, Chloe clamped one edge of the rupture and reached for another clamp. She followed suit and clamped the other end until both ends were covered before starting a cardiac massage. Chloe looked up at the monitor just in time to see the rhythm even out, partly from the relieved pressure and partly because Chloe was squeezing the guy’s heart.    
  
“Good job, kid. How’s it feel?” Dr. Morgan looked at her with a smile and all Chloe could do was shake her head. She had her hand on someone’s heart, squeezing it so the blood still got to his brain.    
  
“Now you gotta stop,” Chloe looked up in confusion when Morgan said that, a pained expression flashing only briefly.    
  
“What?”   
  
“You did good, especially on your first day, but his brain went without blood for too long. You took ten minutes, now there’s a chance he’d be okay if it wasn’t for the trauma to his head,” Dr. Morgan explained, sighing when he saw Chloe turn to observe the patients head, “He jumped out of the third story window to escape the fire. Landed on a car. That mixed with his blood supply being cut off, this guy’s gone.”   
  
Chloe understood. She didn’t want to, but she did. She didn’t stop, though. She couldn’t bring herself to. She continued for another minute or two until Dr. Morgan grabbed her wrist and gently pulled it out of the incision. They both watched as the monitor fell into a steady beep.    
  
“He was gone when he came in, kid. Head trauma, huge lac on his abdomen, not to mention the pole sticking out of him. He came in here as good as dead,” Dr. Morgan patted her shoulder, which she had to admit, was getting a little old already, “Call it.”   
  
Chloe blew out a sigh and turned towards the clock, squinting the slightest bit to see, “Uh, time of death, 0143.” She said, a little too quietly but she still said it. A moment later, she was ushered out of the trauma room and back into the chaos of the ER. Chloe got rid of the trauma gown and gloves she wore and opted for only new gloves, devoid of any blood.    
  
Dr. Chase chose that moment to appear and nearly bit Chloe’s head off for the pace she had. Chloe, meanwhile, bit on the inside of her cheek to keep from saying something back that would make her life a living hell. Dr. Chase ushered her further into the large room, stopping every so often to let another doctor or patient by them. Chloe was taken towards a woman with minor burns on the right side of her face and body and a laceration stretching from her elbow to her wrist on her left arm. Another doctor was already sat down and treating the burns but Dr. Chase still grabbed Chloe’s elbow with enough force to break it before pulling her forward.    
  
“You know how to do sutures, right?”   
  
Chloe nodded, “Yes. I did, in fact, go to med school,” her eyes darted between Dr. Chase and the other doctor whose name she didn’t know.    
  
“Good, go find a suture kit and some lidocaine and take care of her arm,” Dr. Chase said, barely loud enough for Chloe to even understand. The blonde promptly left after that, before Chloe could get a question in.    
  
“What a bitch,” Chloe mumbled and turned on her heel, making her way over to the hallway just outside the ER doors, where the trauma gowns and gloves and other things were kept. She searched through the metal shelves, going one at a time until she found a suture kit and some drapes. She stopped a nurse on her way back to the woman and asked for the lidocaine, which she got surprisingly soon after she rolled a chair over and began draping the arm.     
  
The other doctor, whose name she now knew, gave her directions on how to administer the lidocaine and get everything ready for the sutures she was about to do. Dr. Jefferson, the one giving her the help, made light conversation; or he tried to, at least. Chloe wasn’t giving him the time of day. It was the interns’ first day but considering the size of this accident, Chloe figured they needed all the hands they could get and she’d be damned if she’d screw something so simple as sutures up.    
  
Chloe prepared the area by irrigating the wound with water, using forceps to pick out any foreign objects. Once she was satisfied with her work, Chloe took the 4-0 vicryl from the kit and sucked in a deep breath. She steadied her hand before threading the curved needle through the very end of the cut. Chloe tied two knots after choosing to do a simple interrupted suture and cut the excess before moving her hand a fraction of an inch. She repeated what she did a moment earlier, tying and cutting. She spent the next hour tying and cutting until she finished. When it was done, she went off to find bandages and tape and applied them when she got back to the woman. Now that she was finished, the woman was being admitted and taken to the burn unit. The ER hadn’t calmed down since but Chloe was so lost her work, she forgot everything else for all the time it took. She lifted her wrist after disposing of the gloves to look at the time.    
  
2:54 AM, Chloe groaned and cursed Rachel for not letting her sleep earlier. It had almost been a full 24 hours since she’d gotten any sleep. It had almost been a full 24 hours since she’d eaten anything, either.    
  
The ER slowed down in another hour. The patients who were emergent were taken into surgery and the stable ones had been moved elsewhere and they’d stopped receiving, so everyone had a second to just breathe. Chloe ended up doing a few simple debridements on patients with small burns or cuts. She hadn’t heard or seen any of the other interns since the whole thing started and Chloe didn’t think she had the energy to search for them.    
  
She stepped out of the ER and slowly made her way back to the hallway she was trying to sleep in before Rachel and Dr. Chase interrupted her. What she found when she got there would’ve made her angry if she wasn’t so tired. Rachel, along with Kate and Warren, were sitting on the gurney shoulder to shoulder. Chloe noticed there was room for one more as she walked closer and showed a brief smile before sliding on up next to Rachel.    
  
“What are you guys doing?” Chloe asked, leaning forward to snatch the bag of chips out of Warren’s hand. He let her take it without so much as looking up. Chloe nudged Rachel and lifted a brow.    
  
“Ape boy got to scrub in with the chief. The guy was one of the firefighters, his axe was having an affair with his liver, apparently,” Rachel only shrugged and turned back towards the group. They had a total of six charts spread between them even though it was six to their four.    
  
“How the hell are you guys not tired?” Chloe perked up again, reaching around Rachel to snatch the chart Warren was holding. She flipped through it while she waited for an answer.    
  
“How can you even think about sleep at a time like this? C’mon, give it back,” Warren answered and simultaneously reached out. Chloe held the chart away from her body and Rachel leaned forward to block him off. The girls started laughing and Chloe thought she heard Kate laugh too somewhere in the middle. Warren feigned hurt and clutched at his chest like someone had just put a chest tube in while he was awake.    
  
They all broke down in laughter eventually. The high they were all on at the beginning of the day was finally wearing off. It wasn’t their first day as surgeons anymore. According to Dr. Chase, it wasn’t their second day either.    
  
Chloe was half leaning against the wall and half leaning on Rachel after a while. Tiredness had visited them all and everyone was leaning against someone else trying to get as comfortable as they could on a gurney with too many people on it. That’s how they fell asleep: with Kate leaning against Warren, Warren leaning back against the wall while Rachel had her back to the wall and her head on Warren’s shoulder, and Chloe leaning against Rachel.    
  
Chloe was half-asleep and grumpy when she heard someone move down the hallway. Whoever it was stopped in front of the gurney and then it went quiet. Chloe remained still with her eyes closed until she saw a flash and heard a shutter. She opened her eyes with a groan and immediately prayed to god that she didn’t look like the mess she thought she looked like because the cutest girl she’d ever seen was standing in front of her. The brunette without a name held a photo as it developed, smiling when it finally did. She flipped it around the show Chloe and even Chloe had to smile at how the four interns were. It looked like they’d known each other their whole lives.    
  
Before she knew it, the brunette turned and walked away silently. She stopped at the nurses station and searched around on the desk before straightening and going over to the large board between the elevators. She reached up and pinned the photo to it and Chloe smiled absentmindedly. The brunette turned and waved before disappearing around a corner and Chloe decided to take advantage of the opportunity and get back whatever sleep she had left, even if she fell asleep with a dumb grin on her face.     
  
  
  
_Reality. It’s so much more interesting than living happily ever after._


	4. MVC

_ It’s a beautiful day to save lives. Let’s have some fun. _ __   
  
  
  
Chloe was vaguely aware of what was happening around her. She felt the gurney move and she guessed someone was awake and had to be somewhere. Chloe was also vaguely aware of the chorus of pages that sounded from the four devices in her immediate vicinity. Her eyes were still closed through it all; at least, they were. They opened when Rachel elbowed her in the ribs before standing.    
  
“What happened?” Chloe asked as she sat up, rubbing at her eyes before zeroing in on her watch. It was a little past eight. Later than I would’ve guessed, she thought. She had today to work and then she’d finally be able to go home for some much needed sleep and food and probably a shower.    
  
“We all got paged to the ER. MVC on the highway. People apparently can’t handle the morning rush here,” Rachel said when Chloe slid off the gurney and stretched. The latter nodded and let out a yawn before checking the page herself.    
  
“At least it isn’t Arcadia Bay.”   
  
“Yeah, but Portland is still way too close to that shithole, though.”   
  
Chloe chuckled quietly and watched as Warren and Kate took off down the hall. She glanced at Rachel and they were both grinning when they took off after the others.    
  
The first thing Chloe noticed after stepping foot into the ER was that it was loud. She and Rachel took turns tying each other’s gowns before slipping on gloves, all the while looking around to see where she should go first. Dr. Chase took that thought and crushed it when she suddenly appeared and started yelling out orders.    
  
“Amber, you’re with me,” she said between breaths, pausing to look at her pager, which hadn’t stopped going off since she appeared, “Price, you’re with Prescott in trauma room two. You two,“ she pointed towards Warren and Kate, “start exams on the non-emergent cases and page anyone if you need help.”    
  
She was off again after that with Rachel at her heels and Chloe nodded a goodbye to her other friends before making a beeline for the trauma room.    
  
She entered the room and was immediately met with screaming. It was from the patient for a change. Dr. Prescott, Chloe assumed, had just finished setting a broken arm.    
  
“Hey!” He yelled, looking at Chloe before moving to the patient’s wounded leg, “Call the OR, tell them we’ve got an open femoral fracture and we’re comin’ up.”   
  
Chloe nodded and crossed the room to the phone, the entire conversation was only about a minute but Dr. Prescott was preparing the patient for transport by the time she finished. She went to help, grabbing towels and sponges whenever he requested them. In another minute, they were moving. Chloe ran ahead once they were in the hall and pressed the button for the elevator over and over until the doors pulled open. She ushered the small group of people that were on it off and held it open until Dr. Prescott pushed the gurney on.    
  
The ride to the surgical floor went by slowly, despite the actual time it took to get there. Chloe pulled off the gown and gloves and handed them off in the time being and had two hands on the rail of the bed.    
  
“Second day, huh?” Prescott asked, seemingly too calm for Chloe’s liking. She only nodded in response and watched a smile grace the other doctors lips, “I love interns. They’re always scalpel crazy. Lucky you, though, ortho is the best.”    
  
Chloe just stared for the remainder of the ride and turned forward when the elevator dinged. She pushed the bed forward with the help of Dr. Prescott and a nurse. Another nurse took over when they got to the OR while both Chloe and Prescott went into the scrub room. Chloe decided then that the routine would be something she liked.    
  
She went through the familiar event of being gowned and gloved and before she knew it, she found herself standing across from Dr. Prescott holding the suction and providing irrigation while he cleaned the wound.    
  
“It’s a clean break, at least,” he said when he finished cleaning and instructed Chloe to suction the area. He called for a metal plate and screws next. Dr. Prescott made a proximal and distal incision to give him room to place the plate and screws before actually handling the small metal piece.    
  
“Why the plate and screws and not intramedullary nailing? Wouldn’t it give the bone more support if you put a rod through it?” Chloe asked, furrowing her brows as she watched the other doctor place the plate and the first screw.    
  
“It’s what most surgeons would do, but they’d do that if a piece was broken off and it needed to be put back in like a piece of a puzzle. See this?” He pulled his hand back and motioned for Chloe to lean forward. The femur was split in two without any bone fragments, “The clean break means we don’t have to do intramedullary nailing. A plate and screws work just as well and doesn’t require us to go through the knee or hip to repair it. Same support, same alignment.”   
  
Chloe nodded in understanding and straightened to allow Dr. Prescott to resume his work. She watched him place the rest of the screws, occasionally providing more irrigation and suction after each placement.    
  
“What about the arm?”    
  
Dr. Prescott spared a look at the patients arm before looking back to the leg, finishing the suture he was doing on the muscles, “Most likely non-surgical. Take him for an x-ray after we’re done here, if it’s non-surgical, put a cast on it.” He started on closing the subcutaneous next and then onto the dermis before finishing on the skin. That was the most difficultly since the accident shredded parts and tore others.    
  
“All right, we’re done here. Dress the wound and take him for x-rays, then get him in post-op. I want him on antibiotics until I say otherwise.”   
  
“Yes, sir,” Chloe nodded and did as she was told and was out in the next ten minutes. She spent the next half hour getting scans and getting the patient into post-op, thankfully without another page. She told the nurse to put him on antibiotics while she looked over the x-rays and determined all he’d need was a cast. The next hour was spent getting the supplies and then actually putting the cast on before she left the room, leaving the instructions Dr. Prescott left her to the nurse. She took the chart with her to write the post-op notes, making sure to get her lab coat before starting them and she was about halfway through when her pager went off.    
  
Chloe set the chart down at the nurses station before heading to the elevator, stopping when someone called a code blue. She watched a nurse with a crash cart go past her and into the room, thinking that she looked familiar but couldn’t pinpoint where she’d seen her before. Chloe followed her in, taking in the sight.    
  
“Doctor! She started seizing and she’s tachycardic!” One of the nurses said as she tried to hold the woman on her side. Chloe, for her part, froze. She’d never run a code and was failing epically, unsurprisingly.     
  
“Doctor?” The one with the familiar face said from beside the bed.    
  
Chloe stepped forward and took the patients chart, flipping through it quickly.    
  
“Uh. . Okay. . Did you give her diazepam?”   
  
“Five milligrams.”    
  
“Push five more,” Chloe instructed as she moved over to the bed, she took the stethoscope from her pocket and listened to the woman’s heart. She looked up at the monitor at the same time but stopped when the seizing did. She waited for her heart to correct itself but shook her head when it didn’t.    
  
“Push ten of epi and get me the paddles,” Chloe turned to take the paddles from a nurse before looking back at the monitor.    
  
“Damnit,” she said under her breath and looked down at her hands. They were shaking again, not terribly bad, but still noticeable, “charge to 200.”   
  
Chloe pressed the paddles to the woman’s chest, “Clear!”    
  
She pressed the buttons and looked at the monitor a second later, hoping her heartbeat would even out. “Charge to 250,” she said when it didn’t and shocked her again.    
  
Chloe pulled the paddles back and handed them off when her heart went into sinus rhythm and grabbed her stethoscope to listen to her heart and lungs again.    
  
“Heart sounds good, breath sounds equal and strong,” she said aloud, to no one in particular.    
  
“Good job, Doctor,” she heard one of the nurses say. Chloe nodded and blew out a sigh, pulling the stethoscope to rest around her neck before backing out of the room. It was then that she remembered her page and swore at herself under her breath. She rushed towards the elevator and took it down to the ER floor, stopping when Warren grabbed her elbow before she had the chance to actually go in.    
  
“Be careful, Chase is yelling again. Ignoring her page wasn’t the best idea.”    
  
“There was a code, it wasn’t like I purposely ignored it. Should’ve known it’d set her ass off. Thanks, though,” Chloe said, shrugging when she stepped away.    
  
“Good luck!” Warren yelled from behind her and she allowed herself the laugh, knowing she’d need it.    
  
Chloe turned with a smile and took a step before immediately stopping. The smile she wore was gone and she adopted a defense stance. Even though she had a few inches on Dr. Chase, the woman seemed undeterred.    
  
“And just what are you smiling about?” Chloe watched as the other doctor folded her arms across her chest, not even bothering to give her a chance to explain herself, “When I page you, I expect you to come running. I thought I made that perfectly clear last night or did it not fully worm its way into your little intern brain?”    
  
At this point, Chloe had to physically restrain herself from rolling her eyes so hard she’d end up seeing her own brain, “Some lady crashed on my way down here and I got pulled into it.”    
  
The explanation was kept short and simple for multiple reasons; for one, she really didn’t think Dr. Chase had the mental capability to feel empathy, for two, she really didn’t want to have to explain that she wasn’t necessarily pulled in to deal with the matter at hand, and for three, she didn’t feel one ounce of regret knowing she’d ignored the page to literally save someone’s life.    
  
Dr. Chase, for the first time since Chloe had met her, didn’t have anything else to say but she was desperately searching for something she could. Chloe watched her brows knit as she thought and she could’ve sworn she heard gears turning.    
  
“Just let me know next time,” Dr. Chase said with a sneer and obvious disgust in her voice.    
  
“The next time I’m running a code you want me to stop and make sure someone tells you where I am?” Chloe couldn’t help but say, “What? Do you want a play by play of how I do my job, too?” She bit the inside of her cheek after that, knowing she said too much and out of fear she’d say something else. Dr. Chase was glaring at her and all Chloe could think was that if looks could kill, she’d be dead already by seven different causes.    
  
Chloe picked that precise moment to turn and walk away; judging by the other doctors silence, it was probably for the best. She found Rachel a few minutes later, groaning and slapping at a vending machine. She smiled to herself as she approached, shaking her head and sighing dramatically.    
  
“What the hell happened to you?” Rachel asked, stopping her actions for only a moment.    
  
“The Queen Bitch did,” came Chloe’s response, her eyes narrowing when her friend continued to assault the machine. She looked down at her watch and groaned herself, “Let’s go get something to eat. I’m hungry and if you hit that thing any more, one of the nurses is gonna call security.”    
  
Rachel shot her a glare that held anything but malice and reluctantly surrendered the fight to walk with the punk.    
  
“It ate like three dollars,” Rachel grumbled as they approached the elevators.    
  
Chloe smiled and reached forward to press the button before stepping back and shaking her head, “If it ate the first one, why did you think it was a good idea to put two more in?”    
  
Rachel only shrugged and mumbled something about how she didn’t know.    
  
“I’m just a doctor, what do I know?”    
  
“Touche, Rach. Touche.”    
  
They boarded the elevator a few seconds later and rode in comfortable silence to their destination.    
  
_ Who knew hospital food could smell so delicious? _ She wondered as they strode into the small cafeteria side by side. About half of the tables were already occupied and the line was reasonable for the time of the day so they hopped right in and spent the next ten minutes shuffling through the line and talking about anything that wasn’t related to medicine.    
  
They settled on a table on the emptier side of the room and Chloe immediately dug in on the sandwich she bought while Rachel slowly picked at the meager looking salad.    
  
Conversation was slow, if there was any at all. It mostly consisted of Rachel giving Chloe a weird look whenever she almost choked from eating too fast.    
  
She slowed down for the second half of the sandwich and allowed her gaze to wander. The moment of calm in the sea of what she considered chaos of the last day and half almost made her uncomfortable.    
  
Her eyes eventually settled on one of the nurses she’d seen earlier when she ran the code. Chloe was still trying to figure out where she’d seen her and her brows furrowed slightly in thought.    
  
“The photo,” she said, cringing when she realized it wasn’t in her head.    
  
“The what?” Rachel asked between bites of lettuce with furrowed brows of her own.    
  
“Uh, nothin’, nothin’,” Chloe dismissed quickly when Kate and Warren popped up to obscure her view of the brunette. They sat down heavily, Warren mirroring Chloe from ten minutes earlier and scarfing down his meal like he hadn’t eaten in a week and Kate mirroring Rachel with only picking at her food like she’d be judged for eating like she was actually hungry.    
  
Chloe’s gaze eventually travelled back to the nurse, who now had a doctor sitting with her. Chloe recognized him from the intern mixer they threw before they were all scheduled to work. He was the head of neuro but she couldn’t remember his name. Something Scott or whatever.    
  
“What do you think is going on there?” She asked to no one and everyone at the table. They all turned and looked where she pointed, each of them shrugging in succession.    
  
“Probably talking about a surgery,” Warren said when he’d finally swallowed.    
  
Chloe looked again, watching as Something Scott pulled out a scan to show to the brunette; who, in turn, somehow managed to look both happy and sad about whatever was on it.    
  
She brushed it off and shrugged, directing her attention back to her colleagues. Warren was trying to explain why some movie none of them had ever heard of was the best movie of all time and Kate was still trying to avoid nonexistent judgement and Rachel just looked like she wanted to anywhere else. Chloe swallowed a laugh at all of them and sat back after taking her drink in hand. She took sips from the straw and found herself once again looking at the nurse. She should probably ask for a name at some point but couldn’t find the motivation to do it now.    
  
The nurse was eventually left alone when Whatever Scott stood and left and Chloe quirked a brow when the brunette stood, leaving her food where it was and almost ran out.   
  
  
  
_ Nobody wakes up thinking: 'My world will explode today. My world will change.' Nobody thinks that. But, sometimes, it happens. Sometimes, we wake up, we face our fears. We take them by the hand. And we stand there waiting, hoping, ready for anything. _ __   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First: sorry, sorry, sorry for the delay. Shit got crazy and took all my time for a while. Updates should be more consistent from here on out. 
> 
> Second: there’s a storm a-brewin’.


	5. Unknowing

_As human beings, sometimes it’s better to stay in the dark, because in the dark there may be fear, but there is also hope._   
  
  
  
The sound of a locker slamming shut pulled Chloe out of the power nap she was attempting. She would have ignored it but of course her head was right beside the locker and Rachel was the one doing the slamming.   
  
The rest of their initial thirty-six hour shift went by about as smoothly as they all expected it to. They were tired and slow and not at all used to the demands of their new job. Chloe had poured so much coffee down her throat just to get to the end of her shift that she doubted she’d be able to fall asleep when she got home. Then again, part of her doubted she could wait that long.   
  
Chloe was slow to change out of her scrubs and into the clothes she arrived in. By the time she finished pulling the old leather jacket over her arms, Rachel had all but fallen asleep sitting up while waiting. A small laugh sounded and Chloe took the opportunity to get some revenge by quietly opening her locker before clearing her throat and slamming it shut. Satisfied with the way Rachel almost fell from the bench she was on, Chloe grabbed the backpack she came in with and shuffled towards the exit. Rachel, too tired to be angry for an extended amount of time, only followed silently after grabbing her own bag.   
  
The ride home was quiet, uneventful. Both of them too tired to hold a conversation worth having. Chloe was wrapped up in driving and trying desperately to stay awake while doing so, and Rachel had already fallen asleep in the passenger seat of her truck. A yawn sounded from the driver a few minutes later as the truck was parked haphazardly across two spaces. Chloe pulled the key out before leaning her head against the window and closing her eyes for a few seconds. It was a dangerous game and she spent the short break trying to figure out how long she could draw it out before she actually fell asleep. It wasn’t long enough. In the next minute Chloe was sitting up and rubbing her eyes, leaning over soon after to nudge Rachel awake.   
  
“We’re home, nerd,” Chloe said, trying to sound more awake than she was and probably failing at it.   
  
Both girls left the truck and ambled towards the lobby of their apartment building, muttering ‘hello’s to everyone they passed on the way to the elevator.   
  
Their apartment wasn’t big but it wasn’t small. There was enough space for the two of them to have their own rooms, though having to share a bathroom got annoying every so often. No words were said as they parted, heading towards their respective rooms. Rachel curled up on the edge of her own bed after dropping her bag to floor and was asleep in a matter of seconds. Chloe had all but faceplanted onto her mattress, relaxing even through the heaviness she felt in her bones. She had enough functioning brain left to pull the pager from her pocket and place it next to her head. Sleep took her after a few minutes of silence, the only occasional noise being Rachel’s soft snores from the next room over. It was only nearing 8PM, but their next shift started early the next morning and both girls were attempting to catch up on missed sleep from the past two days since their body’s weren’t accustomed to the demanding hours of their jobs.   
  
Morning came too soon. At least Chloe assumed it was morning. She didn’t move for several minutes before finally pushing herself up, situating herself at the end of the bed while she pulled her phone out and thumbed through social media. She figured she could waste a few minutes before having to actually be productive. They had a little over an hour to get back to the hospital and Chloe was determined to cherish every minute she could.   
  
When she was satisfied with the time she’d wasted, she stood and gathered a set of clean clothes before heading into the bathroom. She took a quick shower, not bothering to fix her hair after she dressed. Chloe woke Rachel by nearly pushing her off the bed before she started on breakfast, avoiding anything too time consuming. Rachel still wasn’t out of the shower when the food was done and Chloe watched the time on her phone impatiently as she ate.   
  
“If your ass isn’t out here in five minutes, I’m leaving without you!” Chloe yelled without looking up from the device balanced in her palm. She counted the minutes as they ticked by, just hoping that Rachel would show up in her peripherals while she was distracted.   
  
“What time is it?” Rachel asked as she _finally_ appeared, prompting Chloe to stand and pocket her phone.   
  
“Five minutes past ‘we’re gonna be late’,” she answered, sliding into her jacket and grabbing her bag along with her keys.   
  
“Shit,” Rachel muttered, doing the same and trying to eat simultaneously. Chloe stood by the front door with an amused expression, thinking that the sight before her looked like a deer with rabies who just happened to wander into a family dinner.   
  
The next few minutes had them outside and into the truck, driving the familiar route back to the hospital. Excitement ran through both of them at the prospect of saving lives.   
  
They’d made it only minutes before their shift officially started, both girls all but running into the intern locker room to quickly change, gaining the attention of both Kate and Warren in the process, both of whom were already changed and looked way more prepared than the two that’d just arrived.   
  
Chloe had just finished tying a knot in the strings of her scrubs when Dr. Chase appeared, only peeking her head in through the door.   
  
“Dr. Scott wants all the interns today, meet him in radiology,” she said, sounding more tired than she looked. Irritability soon took over when none of the interns moved, though.   
  
“I’ll just assume you didn’t hear me. Get down to radiology. Now,” the tone she used was that of a mother scolding her children and Chloe was already trying to think of jokes to share when the four interns moved almost in sync towards the door before filing out one by one. They stayed together on their way through the hospital, chatting idly about everything and nothing. Chloe was surprised to find out that Warren and Kate had carpooled and was even more surprised when Warren asked them all out for drinks one night after work. She didn’t think drinks would hurt anyone since they’d basically fallen asleep on one another already.   
  
Upon showing up to radiology, the first thing Chloe noticed was the crowd. There were about 15 interns altogether including the four in Chloe’s group by the time everyone was situated in the small room. Dr. Scott appeared a few minutes later, a folder tucked under his arm and a chart in the other. He set the binder down before pulling the scans out, putting them up before flipping the lights on. It was a brain, to say the least. A perfectly healthy one as far as Chloe could tell.   
  
“This is Patient X,” Dr. Scott began, standing in front of the small crowd, “I want you all to figure out what’s wrong with them. The symptoms include headaches, nose bleeds, vision loss, vivid hallucinations, and seizures.”   
  
“Was an EEG done?” Kate asked quietly, stepping forward to get a closer look at the MRI scans.   
  
“Yes,” the other doctor nodded and stepped to the side, pulling the chart closer to him before flipping it open, “If you’re thinking about a tumor, that’s what I thought too. The scans look clean and EEG can only tell us something useful if the patient is having a hallucination while the test is in progress. Anyone care to mention why that is?”   
  
Chloe spoke up this time, her eyes flickering between the scans displayed, “The EEG can help us pinpoint the location of the tumor in the brain but if they’re not experiencing a hallucination when it’s being done, the activity isn’t strong enough to be picked up.”   
  
“Good. That was the first problem we ran into. The second is the nose bleeds. Frequent but long, sometimes lasting up to an hour and accompanied with black outs. Any theories?”   
  
“What if it’s an aneurysm that burst? Bleeding on the brain could cause hallucinations because of the pressure and it would account for the nose bleeds,” Warren proposed from somewhere off to the left.   
  
“There’d have to be significant bleeding, we would’ve seen a hematoma on the scans if that were the case,” Dr. Scott said, leaning on the edge of one of tables in the room.   
  
“What about the lab results? Shouldn’t there be something in there?” Chloe asked, finally taking her eyes away from the scans to look at the doctor.   
  
“There were a few things that were elevated but nothing that would cause anything like this.”   
  
The room was quiet after that, the wave of silence sweeping through each of the interns as they tried to recall everything they’d ever learned regarding diseases of the brain.   
  
“Nothing?” Dr. Scott asked after a few minutes of the deafening silence, “That’s why there’s fifteen of you. Figure it out. Team up, work alone, I don’t care. I want something by the end of the week. As an incentive, whoever’s right gets to scrub in.” The doctor left the room after that, leaving the scans and chart there for whoever wanted to look at them. Everything was labeled as Patient X and it left Chloe wondering why.   
  
“Hey, let's go up to the case library. Maybe we can find something similar to this,” Rachel whispered from where she appeared at Chloe’s side.   
  
“Who said we were a team?” Chloe asked with a quirked brow, fighting the grin that threatened to show at the look Rachel gave her, “Alright, alright. It’s not gonna be easy figuring out what it is, though. We can’t get extra scans or any lab work since everything is labeled Patient fucking X. I mean, come on. Are we living in a syfy movie now?”   
  
“It’s cool, I like it. Gotta have the mystery to keep people interested,” Rachel countered, already pulling Chloe by the sleeve of her white coat out of the room and towards the elevator.   
  
“You think it’s a tumor?”   
  
“Could be,” Rachel paused, seeming to think her answer over, “It would have to be tiny as fuck, but even that’s unlikely since the symptoms are so severe. Who knows? Maybe the person’s just screwed up.”   
  
Chloe stifled a laugh as they got on the elevator, listening to the whirring of it as it ascended.   
  
“We’ll have to be quick. I doubt Dr. Queen Bee is gonna let us sit on our asses all day reading,” Chloe commented as the elevator stopped and opened, both girls stepping out and heading towards the case library.   
  
“What, are you scared of her? She’s only a resident,” Rachel said with a familiar twinkle in her eyes.   
  
“Sure, if blonde women with anger issues were actually scary,” Chloe whispered when they entered the room, stopping to glance around. She eventually ambled off, wandering through the rows while Rachel talked to some guy about cases similar to the one they’d been presented to today. It’d been at least ten minutes before Rachel found her and pulled her towards a table setting in the back of the room, a stack of thick folders already waiting for them.   
  
“Ta-da,” Rachel said with a little too much excitement as she sat down and pulled one of the folders into her lap, already beginning to flip through it.   
  
“I guess there are worse ways to kill your boredom,” Chloe muttered as she fell into one of the empty chairs and pulled a folder from the stack, her eyes flickering across the pages as she read.   
  
  
  
_Just when we think we've figured things out, the universe throws us a curve ball. So we have to improvise. We find happiness in unexpected places. We find our way back to the things that matter the most. The universe is funny that way, sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong._


	6. Pressure

_Some days the whole world seems upside down. And then somehow, improbably, and when you least expect it, the world rights itself again._   
  
  
  
Chloe shifted in her chair, narrowly avoiding knocking the folder off her lap at the last second. Her and Rachel had been at it for at least three hours. The strain was taking a toll on her eyes from the nonstop reading and she was more than ready to get back to their actual job of saving actual lives.   
  
“How do you know Patient X is even real? This could just be some exercise for all the interns,” she eventually mumbled, dropping the folder back on the table after reading through the last page.   
  
“What if they make themselves have a vision?” Rachel asked from behind her own folder, ignoring what Chloe had said.   
  
“Hallucination,” she corrected, “And even if they could force themselves into having one, we don’t fucking know who it is to go set up another EEG.”   
  
“You egg,” Rachel said simply, “We’ll ask Dr. Scott. If he agrees then we know it’s a real person, if he doesn’t, we’ll know it’s an exercise.”   
  
Chloe was still thinking about being called an egg when Rachel finished and watched her expectedly until the taller of the two nodded and moved to stand.   
  
“Fine, but you go find and ask him. I’m going to try and at least practice some medicine today.”   
  
“Coward,” Rachel whispered as they left the library and headed back towards the elevator. The women went their separate ways on the bottom floor; Rachel heading wherever to look for the attending doctor while Chloe waltzed into the ER. It wasn’t as busy as it was on her previous shift but she couldn’t complain, her excitement was already making a comeback just from the prospect of someone being stupid enough to do something that would leave them needing medical attention.   
  
She’d just gotten to the desk by the ER doors when a heart monitor went off, briefly drawing her attention before losing it. The curtain around the spot where the noise emanated was already closed and Chloe thought it was safe to assume a doctor was already there. She thumbed through the clipboards organized on the desk, reading through them in an attempt to find someone to treat. Her phone dinged a few minutes later and she pulled it out to see a message from Rachel that only included the thumbs up emoji. She laughed softly, typing a reply with her own single emoji before putting the device away and looking up when a nurse pulled the curtain back and stepped into the middle of the ER.   
  
Chloe had assumed there was a doctor there.   
  
She was wrong, of course.   
  
Not even two minutes later she was being beckoned forward with frantic arm movements and it took her less than thirty seconds to step around the desk and let her long strides carry her forward.   
  
The heart monitor only got louder as she approached, stopping when she got to the exam bed to put on gloves.   
  
“What happened?” Chloe asked, not looking up as she pulled her stethoscope out to check the patients— Samuel’s, she learned from a quick glance at the guys admittance bracelet, heartbeat and breathing sound. The latter was weak and uneven, just enough to cause concern. Then there was the fact that his heart was throwing a rager in his rib cage.   
  
“Did you page anybody?” Chloe asked as she pulled the stethoscope away and slid it around her neck.   
  
“I tried Dr. Chase and Dr. Madsen,” the nurse said, standing at the bottom of the bed looking scared.   
  
“Page them again,” she said as calmly as she could, though her own nerves were starting up, “Get me an intubation tray too.”   
  
Chloe didn’t hear the nurse walk away and turned to focus on the patient instead. She went over the steps of intubation in her head, hoping she wouldn’t screw it up since she’d never done it on her own before. Or at all. She reached under the exam bed and pulled a lever until the patient was laying flat before pulling the pillow out from under his head and dropping it on the floor. She’d just stepped to the head of the bed when the nurse returned with a tray, setting it on one of the rolling tables before turning to hand Chloe a device. The latter switched the small light on the metal object on and held it in a shaky hand while her other went to Samuel’s neck and pulled, her thumb pushing on his jaw until his mouth was open.   
  
“Visualize the vocal chords, push up,” she repeated to herself like a mantra as she lined the device up with the patient’s mouth before following her own instructions. She had try a total of four times before she did it successfully, lifting a hand from his neck to beckon the nurse forward.   
  
“The tube,” Chloe instructed, too lost in focusing to form actual sentences.   
  
She felt the plastic being pressed into her upturned palm a second before she drew her hand back and slid the tube down a larger one in the device, pulling the latter object away and dropping it on the patient’s chest.   
  
“Get a bag,” she said, her hands still shaking. The ongoing noise of the monitors on either side of her head weren’t helping to calm her much and she was all too thankful when the nurse clipped the end of a bag to the tube and squeezed. Chloe stood there dumbly for a few seconds before almost jumping. She donned the stethoscope again and checked the breath sounds, happy that they sounded better than before. It meant she’d put the tube down his windpipe instead of his throat.   
  
The relief was short lived, to say the least. The monitors were still going haywire and Chloe was out of her pay grade. Literally. She was only an intern.   
  
“Uhm,” she mumbled, moving back around the bed until she was able to get a look at the heart monitor.   
  
Chloe looked up and almost screamed. The nurse that stood at the end of the bed looked just as scared as she did, if not more.   
  
“New job fun, huh?” She said, immediately regretting it. Thankfully, neither had time to dwell on it since the heart monitors started beeping even faster, if that was possible. Chloe took a second to look back at the monitor, sucking in a much needed breath.   
  
“We gotta give him epi,” she said to herself before looking back towards the nurse, “We gotta give him epi. Go!”   
  
Chloe moved as the nurse did, stepping away from the bed to drag a crash cart back. She turned the machine on so it’d be ready if they needed it. It was a waiting game now.   
  
She ran over everything she’d done since she got down to the ER in her head just to keep herself calm.   
  
“I came in and Rachel texted me and then I got pulled over here and I checked his breathing before intubation. I paged Dr. Chase and Dr. Madsen. I intubated him right,” she mumbled to herself as she waited, lifting her wrist to look at her watch. The nurse had been gone too long. Chloe fought the urge to storm out and see what was taking so long but she knew it’d be reckless to leave the patient alone, especially in this condition.   
  
Thankfully, she didn’t have to wait much longer when the nurse returned. Empty handed.   
  
“I looked, I couldn’t find it. I’m new here and I don’t know where most things are, I—”   
  
Chloe just stared at her for a moment, her shock mixing with disbelief and the slightest hint of anger. Was she annoyed? Yes. Did her heart match the guys on the bed? Probably.   
  
Her mouth opened and closed as she searched for something to say. They probably stood there for another minute, both women frozen to the floor before someone else pulled the curtain back and stepped forward with a needle. Chloe vaguely recognized her as the nurse who’d taken a picture of her and her friends but she didn’t dwell on it too much the girl raised her hand that held the needle before plunging it into Samuel’s chest. It took a few moments but his heart rate eventually evened out. Chloe breathed a sigh of relief and let the tension leave her body before it immediately came back from the sound of a door being opened and multiple pairs of footsteps rushing towards them.   
  
“Max!”   
  
Chloe heard Dr. Scott before she saw him, barely having time to register anything else before he started shouting again.   
  
“You shouldn’t be working on patients!” He said, a little too loud considering they were in the middle of the emergency room. The nurse— Max, only released a deep breath and took a step away from the bed. Dr. Madsen appeared behind him and stepped forward, pulling his stethoscope from around his neck.   
  
_So now someone shows up_ , she thought and immediately backed away, pulling the gloves off her hands and throwing them out. She stayed on the other side of the curtain, watching as Dr. Madsen examined the patient and Dr. Scott ushered Max away from the bed and out of the ER. She stayed after they’d gone, failing to put the pieces together.   
  
Dr. Madden stepped towards her next, releasing a sigh of his own.   
  
“You did good work for an intern,” the last bit caught the edges of Chloe’s nerves and she went back to thinking she’d made some minuscule mistake. Dr. Madsen didn’t elaborate further as he walked away and left her there to watch as two more people came to wheel the patient away, probably to put him in an actual room now.   
  
She left the ER when it was quiet again, pulling her phone out and shooting a text to Rachel asking where she was. A reply came through not even thirty seconds later and before she knew it, Chloe found herself standing just outside the Chief’s office with the other interns from her group. They were all busy staring through the glass windows that made up one wall of the office, too caught up in a conversation they couldn’t even hear between Dr. Scott, Max, and the Chief.   
  
“What’s goin’ on?” She asked, elbowing Rachel in the side lightly.   
  
“Don’t know. I’m just waiting for Dr. Scott to come out so I can see if the ‘mysterious Patient X’ is coming in for another EEG,” Rachel answered, using dramatic quotations when addressing the topic.   
  
“Doesn’t look like he’s coming out soon,” Chloe commented, noticing how the doctor had taken a seat in one of the chairs in front of the Chief’s desk, “No point just standing around waiting. Plus, I have a story and it’s real fucking weird.”   
  
That was enough to draw Rachel’s attention away, her eyes settling on Chloe with an expectant look.   
  
“Look, I have no clue what’s going on in there but it’s just weird. I had a dude down in the ER and that girl just popped up out of nowhere and shoved a needle in his chest and then Scott walked in all pissed off that she was even near a patient,” Chloe summed it up as best she could, adding a shrug after she finished talking. She noticed that Kate’s and Warren’s attention had also shifted to her during her story and she took the time to shrug at each of them.   
  
“It’s whatever. Who’s hungry?” Chloe asked, grinning at the noncommittal noises that emanated from her colleagues.   
  
“That’s all you have on the brain right now after all that?” Kate asked, receiving a shrug from Chloe as she promptly turned on her heel and started walking back towards the elevators. She kept a slow pace, grinning when she finally heard the gentle footfalls of the other interns as they began to follow her.

 

 

_ Yes, horrible things do happen. Happiness, in the face of all of that, that's not the goal. Feeling horrible, and knowing that you're not gonna die from those feelings, that's the point. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not entirely happy with this chapter but I’m trying to get back into the swing of things, so bare with me while I work through this period where I hate everything I write. 
> 
> I’ll try to update more consistently and I’m currently working up an uploading schedule. I’m thinking every Friday or every Monday. Tell me what ‘ya want. 
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated and I will see you guys in the next chapter.


	7. Lot to Learn

_Have some fire. Be unstoppable. Be a force of nature. Be better than anyone here, and don’t give a damn what anyone thinks. There are no teams here, no buddies. You’re on your own. Be on your own._   
  
  
  
Somewhere along the line of their first week the interns unanimously agreed that the gurney they’d slept on the first night would become their regular hang out in the hospital. Somehow it was decided unanimously but Chloe couldn’t remember ever taking a vote on the topic. Not that she really cared. At this point they all might as well have been living at the hospital considering how much time they spent in the building. Chloe was seriously considering it and would have done it already if it wasn’t for Rachel’s multiple warnings that if anyone ever found out, she’d probably be fired. The blunette only shrugged her off dismissively but she had decidedly not taken up shack in one of the on-call rooms.   
  
Focus, almost as much as sleep, was hard to come by today. Chloe’d spent the night rotating through surgeries after the roof of an apartment building collapsed because some idiot bribed his way through inspections and now two people were dead and seven others were injured because of it. The sun was just rising when Chloe flipped the chart in her lap closed, only noticing them that her three friends had fallen asleep at some point. Deciding she should at least try for sleep at some point, she made a point of dramatically letting her head fall back against the wall even though no one was there to witness it. The sounds of the hospital were comforting at that point and Chloe was asleep within five minutes. Or she would have been had Dr. Chase not stormed up already pissed off as usual. She waited for the inevitable pissed off words from the perpetually pissed off resident once the footsteps stopped only to be met with the familiar click of the brake pedal as it was pushed down followed by the gurney being jostled.   
  
_That’s a new one. Glad she’s upped her game even if she’s still trash at trying to get under our skin,_ Chloe thought as she lifted her head and rubbed whatever sleep she’d gained in those precious minutes away. She elbowed whoever was next to her lightly and was met with an annoyed looking Kate when she opened her eyes. She almost smiled from the glare being sent her away and Kate must’ve noticed because her brows set even further into a harsher glare than before. Chloe leaned forward enough to see that Rachel and Warren were also waking up before sliding her gaze over the Queen Bitch who wore her trademarked Queen Bitch stare.   
  
“Rounds start in ten minutes, whoever’s not there and awake enough to be able to answer my questions is doing scut for a week,” Dr. Chase said with all the grace that her attitude would allow. Quiet acknowledges came from each of the interns in turn before the resident was pleased enough to walk away.   
  
“I guess you don’t need sleep when you’re a literal demon,” Chloe said to no one in particular, although she got whispered laughs from her colleagues.   
  
“What was that?” And the resident was back, though she left being pleased down the hall.   
  
Chloe didn’t answer, instead, she slid off the gurney and stretched the aching out of her bones. The action only made Dr. Chase angrier and now she was in Chloe’s personal space, looking like the latter had just keyed her car.   
  
“Scut for a week,” was all she said before backing away.   
  
“Oh, come on, I didn’t even say anything,” Chloe pushed back, looking more annoyed than Kate.   
  
“Scut. For. A. Week.” Dr. Chase said again, emphasizing each word before walking away, picking up being pleased on her way to the nurse’s station.   
  
“Great job, dumbass,” she heard Rachel say from somewhere behind her and she blindly threw the bird not a second later.   
  
“As if she wasn’t just looking for anything to do that for. She’s got a clamp stuck so far up her ass it’s cutting off circulation to her heart.”   
  
Both Warren and Kate shook their heads at that and offered her sympathetic looks as they slid off the gurney and started for the nurse’s station, leaving her and Rachel alone.   
  
“In your defense, Chloe, we were all thinking it.”   
  
“Yeah, yeah. I’m just the only one who’s got the balls to say it.”   
  
Rachel snorted as she walked past her, leaving Chloe to trail after her. The four of them met up again at the nurse’s station, each taking a different chart from the small shelf behind the desk to look through before rotating them until they were all versed in the patient’s they were doing rounds on. Two of which Chloe had seen in surgery the night before.   
  
Ten minutes later they were huddled into one of the patient’s room on one of the bed with Dr. Chase and Dr. Madsen on the other. Rounds went by smoothly until Chloe spoke up and answered one of the questions, prompted Dr. Madsen to pass the chart of to her with instructions for patient care and when to be down in the OR. That lasted all of five seconds before Dr. Chase tore the chart from her hands with a smirk.   
  
“Apparently you didn’t hear me earlier. Scut for a week. That means no surgeries, I’m afraid,” she said with a mocking tone, strutting out of the room like she just won something. Chloe only shook her head and followed her out, finishing rounding before sitting herself back on the gurney with five charts sat out next to her. She’d gone through those before moving on to new ones, stopping only for bathroom and food breaks. Soon enough, though it felt like years, the other interns returned to sleep.   
  
“Still?” Warren asked, sliding up beside Chloe after moving one of the charts into his lap.   
  
“Yep,” she answered dryly, handing him a pen when he held out his hand, “only six more days to go.”   
  


* * *

  
  
True to her word, Dr. Chase made sure Chloe hadn’t seen a surgery in a week unless it was from the gallery and behind a pane of glass. The week winded down slowly, feeling like the days stretched into months. Chloe was in the gallery, the other interns spread out between the mostly empty chairs when she finished the last chart, closing it with some force.   
  
“Finally.” She mumbled, leaning her head back with a groan.   
  
“You done, Price?” Rachel asked from her seat.   
  
“Yes, finally. I can’t fucking wait to be back in surgery.”   
  
Rachel hummed in acknowledgment before standing, stretching, and heading for the door. “I’m gonna go get a snack, want anything?”   
  
The three of them shook their heads and Rachel shrugged as she walked out, returning a few minutes later with three different kinds of candy and a confused expression. Chloe caught on first, gesturing with her hands to ask about it.   
  
“I just overheard Dr. Scott telling the Chief that the Patient X thing is over,” Rachel announced, gaining the attention of the other two interns as well.   
  
“What? That’s it?” Warren asked, looking disappointed more than anything else.   
  
Rachel shrugged and sat down, opening one of the candy bars and taking a bite, swallowing before speaking again. “That’s all I heard before I came back. Apparently whoever it is is being sent to a different hospital.”   
  
  
  
_It turns out sometimes you have to do the wrong thing. Sometimes you have to make a big mistake to figure out how to make things right. Mistakes are painful, but they're the only way to find out who we really are._


	8. Love, Dad

_ There's a club. The Dead Dads Club. And you can't be in it until you're in it. You can try to understand, you can sympathize. But until you feel that loss...  _ __   
  
  
  
“Price! You’re with me, let’s go!”    
  
Chloe moved through the nearly empty ER as quick as she could, somehow managing not to screw up as she donned a trauma gown and gloves before jogging out to the ambulance bay. The moon was at its peak, full and bright and shining down as Chloe and Dr. Scott waited for the ambulance. She heard the sirens before she saw them, her heartbeat spiking at the prospect of getting into surgery.    
  
When the ambulance stopped and two EMTs stepped out, the blunette’s hands were nearly shaking.    
  
“Derek Parker, forty-seven, blunt force trauma to the head after a hit-and-run. Responsive in the field but lost consciousness on the ride over. BP is—” one of the women started before the patient started seizing. Both EMTs and Chloe stepped forward and held him down, the latter of the three going over the procedure for a depressed skull fracture in her head. The fact that the patient was seizing wasn’t a very good sign. Dr. Scott gripped the rail of the gurney and started pulling it inside, being joined by Dr. Chase once they got through the door. It wasn’t until they were in one of the trauma rooms that the seizure stopped and the EMTs got him transferred over onto a hospital bed.    
  
They were halfway gone when one of them stopped and turned, “His son was in the car with him, no major injuries or anything but mom’s not in the picture.” Dr. Scott muttered something to acknowledge it but otherwise kept himself busy with examining the patient.    
  
“He’s got spinal fluid comin’ out of his nose and his pupils are unresponsive,” the surgeon suddenly slowed and reached for the bandage pressed to Derek’s head, just above his left ear. He pulled it back, sighing through his nose at what he saw. Chloe stepped over to his side to get a better look, having to hold back a grimace. There was almost too much blood to see small dip of his skull.    
  
“Price, go see the kid, make sure the EMTs didn’t miss anything and then have a nurse call child services,” Dr. Scott said without missing a beat; Chloe looked almost disappointed but wasn’t going to argue. The outcome wasn’t looking good, that much was obvious even through her lack of detailed knowledge. She pulled her gloves and gown off and threw them away. “Meet me in OR 2 when you’re done.”   
  
Chloe nodded as she left, taking a second to blink the imagine of that guy’s head away before looking for his kid. The fact that it was almost eleven at night and the ER was almost empty made it easy to spot the boy.  _ That and he’s covered in blood, _ she thought. She silently approached him, giving her best warm smile when he saw her.    
  
“Hey, kid. Your dad’s going up to surgery now.” she paused and turned in time to point out Dr. Scott and Dr. Chase wheeling Derek out of the room and towards the elevator. “I promise he’s in good hands but I gotta check you out and make sure you’re in tip top shape.”    
  
Chloe waited and waited for an answer only to get silence. She didn’t blame the boy for not answering, he’d had a hell of a night. She gently laid a hand on his shoulder and gently nudged him towards one of the empty gurneys, waiting for him to sit down before pulling the curtain halfway closed. She reached for another pair of gloves and pulled a stool over to the side of the bed before sitting down.    
  
“So, what’s your name, kid?” She asked softly, turning to reach for a stethoscope.    
  
It took him a few seconds to actually answer, but he eventually mumbled out his name. “Ryan.”   
  
Chloe nodded and held the end of the stethoscope to Ryan’s chest, asking him to take a few deep breaths before moving it to his back. When she was sure everything sounded like it should she leaned back and pulled the instrument around her neck, pulling a small flashlight out of the breast pocket of her scrubs next.    
  
“This might be a little uncomfortable, just warnin’ you,” she stood, reaching out to lay her palm against Ryan’s forehead. She used her thumb to keep his eye open while she flashed the light in and then out of it, making sure his pupils were reacting normally.    
  
“Are you dizzy at all? Blurry vision? Ears ringing or anything like that?”   
  
Ryan shook his head in response and Chloe put the flashlight away, breathing out a sigh. “Any of that blood yours?” The blunette motioned to Ryan’s shirt before resting her elbows on her knees.    
  
“No. I tried to—” Ryan paused, looking down at his shoes. “I tried to stop the bleeding after the accident. They hit my dad’s side of the car.”    
  
Chloe listened quietly, exhaling harshly when he finished speaking. She could relate a little too much with Ryan and tried her best at separating those feelings.    
  
“Like I said before, your dad’s in good hands. Dr. Scott is one of the great ones. Come on, I’ll take you to the waiting room.” The young doctor was happy that she could go to the OR but now she felt like her head wasn’t fully in the game. She pulled the curtain back after discarding her gloves and led Ryan over to the large desk at the end of the room, leaning slightly over the surface to address the nurse sat at one of the computers.    
  
“Hey, can you call child services and have them send a social worker over? The kid’s dad’s in surgery and no mom. And can you have someone wait with him until the social worker gets here? I gotta head up to the OR.”    
  
The nurse nodded and immediately called out to another woman, instructing her to take Ryan to the main waiting room before picking up the phone. Chloe thanked her before turning around, making a beeline for the elevators. She almost pulled her phone out and texted Rachel on the ride up but thought better. She figured she was probably passed out in a supply closet somewhere after her most recent surgery. It’d been two days since Chloe was officially off scut-duty but this was the first time she’d had the chance of being in another surgery. The familiar jittery feeling was back when the elevator dinged and opened on the surgical floor. Each step towards the OR heightening her level of excitement. She pulled her scrub cap out of her pocket on the way down the hall and put it on, stopping by one of the supply shelves to grab a mask and tie it on before she pushed the door to the OR open. The first thing she noticed was the rapid beeping of the heart monitor though no one was making a move for the defibrillator paddles.    
  
“No one move!” Dr. Scott all but yelled when one of the scrub nurses made an attempt of clearing the patient’s chest. The surgeon was holding two instruments with bloody gloves and an angry look. His movements were slow and calculated, but Chloe could see the frustration in his face. Dr. Chase at least acknowledged her but kept her mouth shut for once. It surprised Chloe as much as it worried her. When Dr. Scott finally did look up, after he couldn’t do whatever he was trying to, he spotted Chloe by the door and sighed.    
  
“Did you have someone call child services?”    
  
“Yeah. A nurse is waiting with his son until a social worker gets here.”   
  
“Good. It doesn’t look too good in here, though. There are bone fragments that got loosened when I pulled opened his skull and I can’t stop the bleeding,” he said, trailing off towards the end like he was talking to himself. “Hang another bag of O-neg.” He told one of the scrub nurses, who hesitated before actually moving.    
  
“It won’t be too long if I can’t get this bleeding to stop. You’re welcome to scrub in.”   
  
“Uh, actually. Is it okay if I go wait the kid?”   
  
Both doctors looked up at her then, each of them wearing expressions that screamed confusion. Somehow, even behind a pair of surgical loupes and a mask, Dr. Chase still managed to look condescending. Dr. Scott only nodded and went back to his work and Chloe didn’t wait any longer to leave. She discarded the mask on her way back to the waiting room, explaining to the nurse that was with him that Chloe could wait instead. Once that was settled, she settled into the seat next to Ryan, smiling when he met her gaze.    
  
“Is my dad okay?”    
  
Chloe tried not to let her smile falter and pushed through it, hoping it didn’t look as fake as it felt. “The doctor is still working. It was a pretty bad accident.”    
  
Ryan didn’t say anything for a few minutes. “What happens if he dies?”   
  
__ Well. How the fuck do I answer that? Chloe thought, her gaze shifting around the room like she’d find the answer in a generic poster about washing your hands or the TV that was playing a late night talk-show.    
  
“It’ll hurt.” She started, because really, it would hurt. “For a long time, it’ll hurt. And then someday it’ll hurt less until it doesn’t hurt at all.”    
  
Ryan listened, nodded like he understood what Chloe meant behind all those words. She kind of wished he didn’t have to understand, kind of wished she didn’t have to either. Ryan didn’t ask anymore questions after that and Chloe didn’t offer any other explanation. It was almost one when she saw Dr. Scott round the corner, slowing down when he saw her and Ryan. He shook his head lightly, getting a nod in response. Chloe looked over at Ryan and suddenly wished that she was back on scut. She’d have picked that over this any day.    
  
“You know, if he does die, everything’s gonna be okay eventually. It won’t be for a long time, but somehow, eventually, you’ll be okay.” Ryan turned to look at her then, looking like he didn’t understand that as much as he did her other little speech. She looked back up to see a tired looking woman with a binder approach the nurse’s desk only to be pointed in Chloe’s direction. She was stopped before she could walk over by Dr. Scott and Chloe guessed she was getting the news that Ryan would get in a few minutes. When the two were finished talking, Chloe stood and offered Ryan another smile before walking away, muttering a greeting and goodbye to the social worker as they passed each other.    
  
“He bled too much. Once his heart stopped, we couldn’t get it beating again,” Dr. Scott explained when Chloe walked over to him. She nodded absently as she leaned against the desk, turning to look over at Ryan as he talked with the social worker.    
  
“Finish up the chart, I gotta go tell the kid what happened.”   
  
“Ryan.” Chloe said without thinking. “His name’s Ryan.”   
  
Dr. Scott didn’t react but he hesitated before walking over. Chloe grabbed the chart and looked one last time before heading towards the stairs, taking them two at a time to the next floor up. She weaved through the hallways until she found the other interns on the gurney, sliding up onto it with a sigh. It turned out that Rachel wasn’t passed out in a supply closet, she was passed out on Kate instead. Though she did wake up when Chloe sat down.    
  
“Who’s there?” She mumbled, sounding more tired that Chloe had ever heard her sound before. The blunette laughed quietly, both at the question and Rachel in general.    
  
“A ghost.”   
  
Rachel nodded and hummed, seemingly satisfied with that answer. “What time is it?”    
  
“Half past one.”   
  
Another nod, another bout of humming before Rachel promptly passed out. Chloe shook her head, smiling the whole time until she remembered she had to finish Derek’s chart. She pulled out a pen and started writing the notes, rubbing at her eyes occasionally. She finished within the hour and resigned herself to sleep.    
  


* * *

  
  
Chloe woke up a few hours later and opened her eyes to find Rachel holding two cups of coffee. She offered Chloe one, which she accepted and greatly appreciated. Once she was awake enough to move, the pair walked towards the elevators, hoping they had time to finish their coffees before the next disaster struck.    
  
“Did you have anything interesting last night?” Rachel asked as they moved into the elevator.    
  
“I guess.”    
  
“Are you okay?”   
  
“Yeah.” She breathed, stopping to drink her coffee. “Something like that.”   
  
  
  
_The problem is, fairytales don't come true. It's the nightmares that always seem to become the reality._ _   
_


	9. Youth

_ I’ve had to give up things but what I’ve learned is that I don’t need much. I don’t need much to be happy. _ __   
  
  
  
_ Okay, so maybe the coffee wasn’t a real good idea.  _   
  
Now that Chloe was standing in the operating room, literally staring at someone’s brain, the coffee really seemed like a bad idea. That’s what she was choosing to blame the shaking of her hands on, anyway. Not the excitement that only surgeons experienced or the way her blood pressure seemed to double in the last thirty seconds. It was the coffee. It was always the coffee. And now her hands cramping from holding the suction at an awkward angle for too long. She would’ve sworn if she could swallow the lump in her throat long enough to work some words around it. Chloe didn’t know why she always thought she’d have a quiet day. One of the reasons she became a surgeon was because she hated quiet days and the idea of sitting at a desk everyday for eight hours made her want to throw up. She was always chasing a different kind of quiet. Now that she’s here, with her shaking and cramped hands, she decided she found that quiet. Surgery was undeniably thrilling when it was loud and fast paced and saving someone’s life in minutes but she liked this the most. The quiet of the operating room, where everyone’s too focused on their job to really talk unless it was needed. She liked the thrill, but she loved the quiet.    
  
Chloe couldn’t even remember being pulled into the OR. One second she was stepping off the elevator with Rachel and the next she was being ushered up to the surgical floor with Dr. Scott. Apparently her stunt of staying with Ryan made the surgeon tolerate her a little more. She wasn’t disappointed. If she was, it was wiped away when she caught the death glare Dr. Chase was trying to throw her way. She would’ve smiled at the resident had it not been for the looming want to never have to do scut for a week again. It would probably only a couple days, but all the good things do. Not even an hour later, Chloe was helping drill burr holes and move a bone flap and holding the suction for Dr. Scott. It was something she could do. She could hold the suction and move it when told and step back and  _ listen _ .    
  
During one of the pauses when the suction wasn’t needed, Chloe stepped back and took a moment to think. About the last few weeks and the coming few weeks. All the interns were set to have the next day off but for the first time in her life as an employee, she couldn’t think of anything worse than having a day off. She realized then that this job was quickly chipping away at the punk attitude she was supposed to have. She didn’t mind, if she was being honest with herself. Even if she did, she would’ve suffered through it. She didn’t go through seven years of extra schooling just to pick something easier when everything was said and done.    
  
She was suctioning again, this time to clear the surgical field of extra blood. Dr. Scott had successfully clipped the aneurysm but due to its size, he’d purposely burst it. It was dangerous and Chloe didn’t think she was skilled or confident enough to actually be trusted with the job of getting all the blood. Except Dr. Scott was there, reassuring her that yes, she could do it. And yes, she was doing it well.    
  
Overall, it was a quick surgery. Only about an hour. It was a routine surgery aside from draining the aneurysm itself. Throughout med school, she always thought she’d hate the routine surgeries. The ones where you’d do four or five a day, or the ones that had induced no adrenaline rush. She wanted to laugh now, as she was walking out of the OR, at how stupid that thought was. Surgery was surgery. When you truly love what you do, nothing about it is boring.    
  
She met up with the other interns in the ER.    
  
“Is there a reason we’re all just standing around?” She asked, coming up behind the group of three.    
  
Warren was the first to turn around, offering her a smile when he realized it was her. “Hey, Chloe. And yes, there is a reason. We’re all waiting around to see how this disaster sorts itself out.”   
  
Chloe moved forward, wedging herself between Warren and Kate to get a better look. Dr. Wells was talking to Dr. Chase, though judging by the body language of both individuals, it was far from a good conversation.    
  
“What happened?” She asked, addressing no one in particular.    
  
“Dr. Wells showed up when the Queen Bitch was screaming at a nurse for bumping into her or something. I don’t really know, I showed up near the end of that argument and the beginning of this one.” Warren answered, crossing both his arms across his chest.    
  
“Which means that she’s gonna extra bitchy today and tomorrow and probably until she gets too old to do surgery anymore.” Rachel commented, making the other three breathe out sharp laughs.    
  
It was another couple of minutes before the conversation ended. Dr. Wells walked out of the ER and Dr. Chase walked over to them, looking like her ego had been knocked down a peg or two.    
  
She pulled two bags out of her pocket with vials of blood in each and held them out to Chloe, “Take these up to the lab, get me the results as soon as you can.” She nodded as she took them, turning on her heel slowly before stepping forward, barely catching the instructions for the other three. Chloe took the elevator up two floors and handed the blood over, stopping just to make sure they actually had labels on them. Screwing up someone’s labs didn’t really seem all that appealing, especially when the person they were for would probably be going on another journey to make her interns lives a living hell. Once she handed the blood over, she went and got the chart from her morning surgery and finished the post-op notes, stopped by the patient’s room for a quick exam, texted Rachel back after her phone vibrated a total of 17 times, and got something from the vending machine since she hadn’t eaten anything since lunch the day before.    
  
Chloe took the lab results back to Dr. Chase when they were done and left feeling relieved that no kind of confrontation happened. She was on her way down to the cafeteria when she was paged by Dr. Scott and awkwardly stayed on the elevator when it opened on the ground floor instead of getting off. Chloe walked as quick as she could without jogging even though the page wasn’t an emergency. When she got to the patient’s room she was slightly nervous that she’d done something wrong when she saw Dr. Scott flipping through the patient chart with a deadpan expression. Though since she’d been working with him, it was normally just the way his face looked.    
  
“Good job with the notes,” he said without looking up, eventually flipping the binder closed and setting in on the bed. “Take him to CT, get the results when you’re done. Do hourly exams to make sure there’s no abnormal swelling. He should wake up soon, make sure you check everything when he does. If there’s any slurred speech or disorientation, page me. Other than that, you did good today.”   
  
Chloe probably kept nodding the entire time she got the directions and stretched her hand out when Dr. Scott walked by to take the chart from him. She mumbled a quiet “thank you” as he passed, releasing a deep breath when he was finally gone. She opened up the chart, balancing it on her left palm while she wrote the new instructions and took it to the nurses desk before going back into the room. She unhooked the patient from the machines and lifted the side rails. Chloe moved herself to the bottom of the bed and pulled to get it away from the wall before going to other side, narrowly avoiding tripping over a wire. As good as she liked to think she was at her job, she came up short when it came to not tripping over things.    
  
The good thing was that she didn’t get lost again. The other good thing was that even if she did, this patient wasn’t awake to give her shit for it.    
  
Once Chloe had him back in his room, she pulled her stethoscope from around her neck and pressed the circular end against his chest, moving from one side to other to make sure his breathing was nice and even. She checked his nose for any discharge, thankful that there was none and pulled his eyelids back one at a time to make sure his pupils still dilated. She wrote the results in his chart and left to get the CT scans after leaving one of the nurses with the instructions to page her when the patient woke up. She spent the next half hour trying to find Dr. Scott, stopping multiple times to ask anyone if they knew where he was. The doctor had apparently given Chloe her instructions and then promptly fell off the face of the fucking planet.    
  
“Kate! Have you seen Scott?” Chloe asked tiredly after lightly grabbing the blonde’s forearm to stop her.    
  
“I saw him talking to the Chief earlier but I don’t know where they went. His office, maybe?”    
  
Chloe did everything short of vocalizing her frustration at the answer, her hand dropping from Kate’s arm. “Yeah. Thanks.”   
  
And now she was tracing her steps back to one of the main hallways that led to the Chief’s office. She knew before she actually got there that Scott was, as she was told, still talking with the Chief. Those windows had to be a bitch sometimes.    
  
Chloe tucked the scans between her left arm and body and pulled her phone out, playing a few levels of Candy Crush while she waited for Dr. Scott to finish whatever conversation he was having. It took her losing three times in a row to finally give up.  _ It’s a dumb game, anyway. Next time I’ll get the bitch _ , she thought just as Scott was coming out of the office looking significantly more pissed off than he did an hour ago when Chloe had last seen him. He stopped when he spotted her and huffed out a breath when she handed them over.    
  
“I checked him over before finding you. Everything looks good so far but he wasn’t awake when I left him,” she said with confidence.    
  
“Huh? Yeah, good. Keep up with the hourly exams and just let me know if anything changes. Page me if it’s a 911 but I have a surgery in fifteen minutes.”   
  
Chloe nodded and watched him leave, a little more than curious about what the hell happened with the Chief and her phone chose that exact moment to vibrate.    
  
  
**Rachel** :  _ foooooood _ .    
  
**Chloe** :  __ omw   
  
  
She quickly typed her reply and then headed for the elevators, stopping by the intern locker room to grab her white coat before heading down to the cafeteria. It wasn’t hard to spot her friends when she arrived. Warren’s sad excuse of a haircut could be spotted from a mile away. She quickly got in line for food, thanking whatever god’s would listen that it was relatively short today, and then headed over towards the table with the other interns.    
  
“What’s up, nerds?” Chloe asked, sitting down and immediately taking a bite from the burger she got.    
  
“Takes one to know one, dork,” Rachel answered between bites of her salad.    
  
Warren opened his mouth and looked like he was about to go on another tangent about some old sci-fi movie that none of them had ever before when Chloe lifted her hand and shook it back and forth, effectively silencing him for a couple more seconds.    
  
“Sorry, ape-boy,” she said around a mouthful of burger, pausing to swallow before continuing. “Guess who just came storming out of the Chief’s office looking hella pissed off?” She waited, and waited. None of the other interns looked particularly interested in her story.    
  
“All of you suck. Anyway, it was Scott,” she eventually said to none of them in particular.    
  
“You think it’s got something to do with whatever that Patient X shit was? He was at the top of the whole thing.” Warren spoke up, looking slightly more interested while the other two still couldn’t be bothered.    
  
“Fuck if I know. It’s above my pay grade. I’d just like him to look a little less pissed off while I’m working with him. Also, what’s up with those two being a couple of Debbie Downers?”   
  
Warren shrugged in response. “Probably tired. I know I am. I’ve been perpetually tired since our first day.”   
  
A round of agreements made their way around from intern to intern, and the rest of the lunch was finished in comfortable silence or easy small talk about anything other than surgery. It was hard to talk about your day with people who experienced the same thing.    
  
Chloe and Rachel split from the other two when they finished eating, both of them heading back towards the elevator. Chloe had to check on her patient again, which she figured was going to get old for the other five times she’d have to do this until she shift ended.    
  
“Seriously, what’s up with you?”    
  
Rachel exhaled slowly, shaking her head. “I’m with the Queen Bitch today. She’s just being her usual ‘fuck-you’ self and unlike someone I know,” she paused, forcing a cough to clear her throat that ended up sounding strangely close to ‘Chloe’. “I’m not trying to be put on scut for a week. That shit looked boring and I already hate doing the two or three charts a day for the cases I’m actually on.”   
  
“You got me there. Maybe you should try the kindness thing. Who knows, all those school posters could’ve been right all along.”   
  
“Fucking nerd,” was all Rachel said, though she wore a smile. The pair took the elevator up and their paths split up when they stepped off. Neither said goodbye since they’d probably see each other again twenty more times and then another thousand times considering they shared an apartment.    
  
Chloe walked back to the patient’s room, doing another exam. She checked the same things she did before and updated the chart with the same notes and a different time stamp. She was halfway through them when her pager went off; she pulled it from where it was clipped onto her waistband.    
  
“Oh, shit.” Chloe said without thinking too much about it. She quickly put the chart back and stuffed the pager into her pocket and walked as quick as she could without looking weird to the staircase, taking two at a time up to the OR floor, all the white trying to tie her scrub cap on at the same time. She walked through the scrub room for OR 1 and donned a mask before entering the operating room.    
  
“Scrub in, I need another set of hands.” Dr. Scott said from behind his mask. Chloe nodded and retreated back to the scrub room, keeping the mask on as she scrubbed in. Four very, very long minutes later she walked back into the OR and was gowned and gloved and standing to Dr. Scott’s right.    
  
“Someone check her eyes.” He said, prompting one of the nurses to step forward while producing a small flashlight.    
  
“Price, get the suction. Follow behind my cut, there’s already too much blood on her brain.” Chloe turned as she was handed the suction, lifting and angling her arm so she could follow directly behind Dr. Scott’s scalpel.    
  
“I hate how unpredictable these things are. Routine surgeries turn into such a shitshow when one of these damn things decides to go and be a major problem.” Dr. Scott commented. “I’m gonna try and open up the aneurysm to completely drain the blood, I need you in there quickly to get the rest of it, understand?”   
  
“Yes, sir.” Chloe answered automatically, readjusting her footing really for no reason. It wasn’t going to help anything and it didn’t cause a problem to begin with. Still, she did it, more out of nervousness mixed with excitement. It got quiet again. That kind of quiet that’s charged with electricity.    
  
Her arm was lifted out of the surgical field while the attending surgeon finished cutting and Chloe held her breath until it was over and he gave the go ahead for her to suction the blood. She was sure to get all of it before stepping back, watching as Dr. Scott cauterized one of the smaller vessels that he’d previously cut and then placing a hemostatic agent in the surgical field. It was another half hour before he finished closing the dura and reapproximating the bone flap.    
  
“Keep an eye on her too when she’s in a room. Same instructions for the other one. Get another CT in about an hour, too.” The attending said when they were finished and scrubbing out, both of them watching the woman being wheeled out of the OR.    
  
“You got it.” Chloe answered, stepping away from the sink and drying her hands. She pulled her scrub cap off as she left, taking the stairs down one floor. She followed up on both patients, updating the exam notes for both and the post-op notes for the second. Rachel found her during the post-op notes and leaned against the desk beside the blunette.    
  
“Did you just get out of surgery?” The other girl eventually asked, just as Chloe finished up the last note.    
  
“Yep. Interesting as ever. Just like the one this morning. Who knows, maybe I’ll have another one in the next three hours before we get to go home and drink.” Chloe said as she flipped the chart closed and set it on the other side of the desk for one of the nurses to put away.    
  
“Speaking of, we’re meeting Warren and Kate after we get off in a bar down the street. Can’t remember what it’s called. Wild Traveler’s? Something like that. Anyway, we’re gonna ride there when our shift is done. Then we can go home and you can play dead for a whole twenty-four hours.”   
  
“As surgeons, aren’t we supposed to not have an active social life?” Chloe questioned, pulling her pager out of her pocket to reposition it on the waistband of her scrubs.    
  
“You’d think. It doesn’t count when it’s coworkers so technically, we still have no social life,” Rachel was grinning as she walked backwards towards the elevators. “Don’t be late for our not-really-a-social-life social life tonight.” She tacked on when she got no reply from the taller girl.    
  


* * *

  
  
  
Neither patient had woken up by the time her shift ended three hours later. It was because of this that Dr. Scott informed her with much excitement that she would still be on call during her day off, since she was the intern on record for both patients. It didn’t annoy her as much as she thought it would; only now, her going out with the others to a bar seemed a lot more pointless since she couldn’t drink.    
  
Chloe walked into the locker room at exactly six, already making a face at Rachel when she was met with a glare. “Hey, I’m not late. I am right on time.”   
  
“Not mad at you. Dr. Pain in the Ass put me on call for all her patients,” Rachel answered, her voice considerably less bubbly than it was the last time they talked. Chloe snorted at the comment, shaking her head as she made quick work of changing out of her scrubs.    
  
“What about the other two, ‘they on call too?”    
  
Rachel shrugged, sitting down on one of the benches to pull on and tie her shoes. Warren walked in a few minutes later rubbing his eyes and Kate soon followed, sighing when she finally sat down.    
  
“Well, don’t we look like a sad bunch,” Chloe said, trying to keep the mood light as she pulled her boots on.    
  
“I got put on call,” Warren and Kate said simultaneously. This time Chloe did laugh, earning herself a round of glares.    
  
“Easy. So did I. So did all of us. Great idea to go to a bar, huh? We’ll be the only four people inside not drinking any actual alcohol.”    
  
“They have food that I don’t have to cook and it wasn’t made in a hospital, I’m still going,” Warren said from the next row of lockers. Chloe sat down next to Rachel after sliding into her jacket and pulling her bag from her locker.    
  
“Going straight home and playing dead while we can is looking pretty good right about now, I bet,” the brunette said, turning to look at Rachel just in time to avoid getting smacked upside the head. Both of them dissolved into laughter seconds later, even Kate shared a smile while Warren came around the corner with a confused expression.    
  
“Everyone ready?” Rachel asked a few minutes later. Kate was just grabbing her bag when she nodded and Warren and Chloe were both already standing by the door. “Okay, good. Let’s go. I’m starving, tired, and annoyed.”    
  
Chloe and Warren shared a look as they came out of the locker room and headed for the elevators. The four of them rode down to the ground floor in silence and departed without saying anything. Chloe and Rachel split off towards the blunette’s truck and the other two went to their respective cars.  _ We should just carpool to work. It’d be less weird than driving three separate cars literally a hundred yards away, _ she thought as she hopped into the driver seat and started the truck. All three cars pulled out a few seconds later, all in succession towards the oh, so far away bar. It took them a whopping thirty seconds to get there, another thirty to park, and then another thirty to get inside.    
  
The four of them spent the next hour and a half eating and playing darts and drinking all the soda the bar had. Despite her earlier reservations, she was actually having fun. After they’d all been gamed out and soda’d out, they said their goodbyes in the parking lot and went all their separate ways.    
  
Chloe, true to Rachel’s word, had fallen face first onto their couch the second they got home. Rachel would have done the same had she been faster. On the way to her room, she bent down as she passed the couch and whacked Chloe in the back of head since the latter blocked her when they were at the hospital.    
  
“Payback!” She yelled from inside her room, lazily pumping a fist in the air when she heard Chloe groan from the living room.    
  
“Set your alarm!” Chloe yelled back after reluctantly lifting her head up, only to let it drop back down as soon as the words were out of her mouth. It wasn’t until a half an hour later that she slid her boots off so she could get more comfortable on the couch.    
  


* * *

  
  
Chloe’s life was still sad. She still had a dead dad and shitty town to call home and sometimes she had to watch people’s lives fall apart inside the hospital walls, but it was still enough. Not-a-social-life social lives and work friends and time spent an OR; it was still enough for her to be happy.    
  
  
  
_ There comes a point when you have to suck it up and stop whining and start living. _


	10. Life Boat

_ When the ground gives way and your world collapses, maybe you just need to have faith. And trust that you can survive this. Maybe you just need to hold on tight. And no matter what, don't let go. _ __   
  
  
  
Chloe almost had a full eight hours of sleep. Considering they turned in before 10 p.m., she didn’t have to try very hard for eight hours. At least that’s what she thought until she heard the alternating beeps from her and Rachel’s pagers going off just before four in the morning. Chloe took a full two minutes to wake up, realize where she was, remember why she was on the couch, and where the beeping was coming from. She opened Rachel’s door five minutes later to find her roommate gathering a change of clothes.    
  
“I know. It woke me up too,” she said between steps, grabbing her bag and stuffing the clothes she’d gotten from her closet and dresser inside. “Go get what you need and we’ll go.” Chloe nodded, turning and heading for her own room. She got a new set of clothes and walked back to the living room to get her bag and stuff her clothes inside. They both took turns quickly brushing their teeth before leaving. They could always take a shower at the hospital when they had the time. Once in the truck, Chloe relaxed into the worn leather. Rachel was driving today. It didn’t happen often but Chloe couldn’t complain. She liked driving and disliked anyone else driving her truck.    


* * *

  
The pair stopped at one of the coffee carts inside the hospital before moving on to the interns locker room to change.    
  
“You look like shit, no offense,” Chloe commented as they rode the elevator down to the ER, their coffees finished and thrown away before taking the trip.    
  
“Every time you say ‘no offense,’ you still end up being offensive,” there was affection behind Rachel’s words and a smile on her face. It immediately faltered when they left the elevator and actually got into the ER. An attending from each specialty was already there and bustling around, as were Warren and Kate. Chloe briefly wondered how they got there first until her name was called by Dr. Morgan.    
  
“Price, I’m gonna need help,” he said over his shoulder as he walked into one of the trauma rooms. Chloe made for the same one until a different doctor called for her.    
  
“Dr. Price, you’re with me. I’m sure Dr. Morgan can do with Dr. Amber for today,” a female voice commented. Chloe shared a look with Rachel before the latter disappeared into the room that Dr. Morgan had gone into. Chloe walked over to the other doctor, mimicking her actions as she donned a trauma gown and a pair of gloves.    
  
“Have you been on the PEDs rotation yet?” The attending asked as she pulled a stethoscope around her neck. Chloe shook her head, trying not to let her emotions show. She wasn’t interested in PEDs. Cutting into kids wasn’t exactly her cup of tea. It was the one fault in surgery that she ever found since she first became interested in the profession. She didn’t think she could handle the heartbreak of watching kids die.    
  
“Well, the first time tends to mess with the first-years. This case isn’t going to be easy. Family was coming home from vacation and the dad fell asleep behind the wheel and they wandered into the other lane and was hit. The parents are already here. The kid took a little longer to get out, the ambulance will be here in a minute. Look, just don’t get too stressed. Don’t freeze. I know you’ve heard it before, but it’s different working on kids. You’ll be fine, just do everything I tell you, got it?”   
  
Chloe nodded, taking a deep breath before following the doctor out to the ambulance bay. She couldn’t remember her name. All the interns met the attending at an event thrown by the hospital before they started but she was never good with names. As far as she was concerned, or cared, she could get away with addressing everyone she worked with as just ‘doctor.’    
  
“I wish I could tell you what to expect but we didn’t get much information, and judging by the condition of the parents, I don’t have too much hope. Just don’t freak out, I hate when the interns do that,” the doctor mumbled the last part, though Chloe caught it loud and clear in the quiet night air. The younger of the two blew out a nervous sigh, fiddling with her gloves while the ambulance sirens approached. The blunette didn’t look up until the vehicle pulled in; both her and the attending stepped forward once the doors were opened and the kid was pulled out. Chloe would’ve stopped to gasp if there was time to. The other doctor already had her stethoscope pressed against the little girl’s chest as they wheeled her in.    
  
“Severe blunt force trauma to her chest and abdominal area and an open wound in her chest. Bruises are rigid, probably filled with blood. She’s awake, though. She’s slurring her words. BP was low in the field, hasn’t improved any,” one of the EMTs explained as they got the girl into a trauma room and moved onto one of the hospitals gurneys. When the EMTs left, Chloe stepped forward after grabbing a pair of scissors and cutting through her shirt. The bruises were hard enough to look at but Chloe found herself pointedly avoiding looking at the little girl’s face. She’d caught glimpses here and there and knew that it wasn’t pretty. She’d seen blood and figured that was all she needed to know.    
  
“Get a portable ultrasound in here, I need to see where she’s bleeding from. See if Morgan and Scott are busy, if not, tell them I need ‘em.” Chloe nodded before stepping away, moving out into the ER. She stepped in a nurse’s path and asked for the ultrasound before heading for one of the other trauma rooms. She briefly poked her head inside both rooms where the parents were, her mood sinking with each scene. It wasn’t going to be an easy night.    
  
Chloe went back to her own room just as the portable ultrasound was getting there and moved to help move the girl so that the ultrasound could be easily taken. “Morgan and Scott are busy with the parents,” she started. “It doesn’t look good for either one so it might be awhile.”   
  
The attending barely gave any indication that she heard the intern, instead she was fully focused on the ultrasound. Both doctors turned towards the screen at the end of the bed.    
  
“Shit,” the other surgeon announced. “Okay, we gotta get her into surgery now. She’s got blood everywhere, there’s no way to tell where it’s coming from without opening her up.”    
  
Chloe blew out a harsh breath, not moving a muscle even as her instructor started moving things so they could go up to the OR.    
  
“Price,” she barked. “Don’t freeze up on me now, we haven’t even gotten to the hard part. Come on, help me move her.” It took another minute for the intern to snap back into reality. She pulled up the side rail with shaky hands before getting a nod from the other surgeon, both of them staying quiet as they wheeled the gurney out. They were in the elevator when the little girl spoke. She was quiet and both doctors and the nurse with them almost missed it.    
  
“Are you gonna fix me?”   
  
Chloe looked towards the other surgeon, who was staring back at her. She wanted to yell about the lack of emotion she saw on her face. She eventually looked back at the girl and laid her gloved hand over her bloodied one. “I’m gonna try my best.” Chloe hoped she sounded more confident than she felt.    
  
They got as far as pushing the gurney into the operating room before the nurses took over to let both surgeons go scrub. Chloe discarded the gloves and trauma gown and put on her scrub cap and a mask. She was opening a bar of soap when the other doctor spoke for the first time since being in the ER.    
  
“That was good what you did back there. It was almost convincing,” she started, beginning to wash her own hands after following the same routine Chloe did. “Can you hold it together in there?”   
  
The blunette sat on the question while she finished scrubbing, taking a deep breath when she was done. She held her hands up like she was supposed to and turned to the attending. “I’ve got no clue what the hell is gonna happen in there, honestly.”    
  
She heard a snort come from her colleague before they both entered the OR and were gowned and gloved. The little girl had already been moved onto the operating table, put under, and draped.    
  
“I appreciate the honesty, though I’m not sure if I’m happy about it,” she commented when they moved to opposite sides of the patient.    
  
_ That’s all this is, _ Chloe thought.  _ She’s just another patient, nothing different. I’ve done this before and I can do it again.  _ __   
  
“Everything’s ready, Dr. Archer,” one of the scrub nurses said, pulling Chloe out of her head. The attending extended her hand and asked for a scalpel. Chloe watched as she made an incision from the diaphragm downwards, curving the cut around the belly button when she down far enough. She opened the peritoneum next. There was relatively no blood until the abdominal cavity was opened. Once it was, blood came flowing out.  _ I think ‘internal bleeding’ doesn’t do it justice, she thought.  _ __   
  
“Price, get in there with your hands. If there’s any clots, get them out,” Dr. Archer instructed. Chloe nodded and reached forward, blocking everything out except her task. She did notice at some point that the attending had gotten the suction and was moving it around Chloe’s hand.    
  
“Wait,” the blunette whispered, twisting her right hand until she was reaching under the spleen. In the next moment, she pulled her hand out and dropped the blood clot in a basin that a nurse was holding.    
  
“That’s the only one I felt but I think she might be bleeding from her spleen,” Chloe explained, pulling her left hand out and taking the suction from Dr. Archer.    
  
“Alright, keep suctioning. I’m gonna see if I can throw a stitch in,” she said with a nod, turning her head towards a nurse right after. “Call the blood bank, tell them I need two bags of O Neg.”   
  
Chloe kept moving the suction around, trying to get the blood out of the surgical field as quick as she could. It didn’t even look like it was making a difference but when she glanced at the plastic container the suction was attached to, it was already halfway filled with blood. Not to mention that the heart monitor the patient was hooked up to was beeping too quickly than was normal. Her blood pressure was worse than it was when she came in too but Dr. Archer didn’t look worried about it. Or worried at all. That alone was enough to make Chloe worry.    
  
The attending had both her hands working, her left hand holding a retractor that was lifting the spleen up enough that there was a clear view while the other held forceps with a suture at the end. Chloe watched her do three quick stitches on the cut alongside the bottom of the spleen and was relieved for a brief moment when they held up.    
  
“She’s still bleeding,” Chloe announced, although she probably didn’t have to since it was painfully obvious that blood was still coming from somewhere.    
  
“Calm down. We’re nowhere near finished. Reach back in and tell me if you feel anything,” Dr. Archer instructed. Chloe stared at her for a second before doing as told and reaching back in with her right hand. She started back at the spleen and moved her fingers to the left. The stomach felt normal, at least. She followed that down to the small intestine, looping her fingers under it as she traced it down to the colon. She heard the nurse change the container that the suction was connected to behind her at some point.    
  
“The stomach felt fine but it could still be injured. It’d be easier to tell if I could actually see it. So far the small intestine feels-” she paused, furrowing her brows while she worked her finger against a small bump she found.  _ Oh shit.  _ __   
  
“There’s a hole in her small intestine. I don’t know how far down I am, it could be the end of the duodenum or the jejunum,” she said, looking up at the attending.    
  
“We’re gonna need a stronger suction. We need to get this cleaned up or she’s at risk for infection. You know how to throw a stitch, right?”   
  
Chloe lifted both her brows, her mouth hanging open slightly behind her mask. “I don’t really think now is a teaching moment. This is serious and I don’t want to screw it up. A perforation only means that there’s bacteria spreading so something else has gotta be damaged or there wouldn’t be this much blood.”   
  
“You’re a surgeon. You have to learn somehow because not every surgery is gonna be routine,” the attending fired back.    
  
“This is dumb, we’re wasting time,” Chloe answered.    
  
“Exactly,” Dr. Archer reached for another pair of forceps with a suture on the end and held it out to Chloe. “So lets not waste anymore, yeah?”    
  
The intern looked at the forceps and then at the doctor and went back and forth between the two for a couple seconds. She pulled her right hand up after dropping the suction and placing her left hand where her right one previously was and eventually, reluctantly, and with a shaking hand, reached out and took the forceps. She squeezed the metal until it bit into her palm and took a few deep breaths. The door to the OR was opening and someone walked in with what she assumed was the blood Dr. Archer ordered but Chloe was now too focused to care. Her brows were furrowed again as she reached forward with the forceps in hand, guiding the needle into the small intestine and tying it off. She’d only done sutures on the outside of the body before this. As much as it was the same, it was different. The tissue she was suturing now was too pliable, fragile. Chloe was afraid she’d tear it if she pulled too hard. She did two more sutures at a slower pace than the attending and finally allowed herself to breathe when it was over.    
  
“Go over it again, make sure the entire perforation is closed,” she reminded her, prompting Chloe to run her left index finger over the new stitches.    
  
“It might need more stitches when we get the blood cleared out but I don’t feel anything that’s obviously open,” she commented.   
  
“We’ll put a patch on it before we close her up. Now, onto the bleeding. Go over everything again, pay attention this time,” Dr. Archer advised. Chloe handed the forceps off to a nurse and reached in with both hands this time. She didn’t worry about the spleen, starting with the stomach again. She moved her hands under and over it and eventually to both ends. There was a small cut on the lateral side.    
  
“There’s a small cut on the lateral side, I think. It doesn’t feel very big, I don’t know if that’s what all the blood is coming from,” Chloe announced. Dr. Archer nodded and got another pair of forceps, keeping them this time as she reached in and let Chloe guide her hand to where she thought the cut was. Chloe grabbed the suction again while the other doctor was busy suturing and made another go at trying to remove some of the blood. It was too much blood and she didn’t think two bags were enough to make up for what was lost. Even so, once the damage to the stomach had been fixed, the blood sitting stagnant around her organs was more easily removed. Still not easy, but easier than before. Chloe could actually see a difference now. The abdominal organs slowly came into view the most she suctioned.    
  
“Okay, we need to go back and make sure everything patched up and will hold. Pull the spleen back, will you?”    
  
Chloe extended her hand and was surprised to find that she didn’t even have to ask for the retractor because it’d been pressed into her palm before she could.  _ Scrub nurses are awesome.  _ __   
  
The intern moved the retractor to her right hand and positioned it before pulling, lifting the spleen until the sutures that’s been put in could be seen. Dr. Archer examined them, throwing in two more at each end of the cut before nodding her approval. Chloe moved the retractor over to the stomach, doing the same process to pull it up. Once again, the attending looked over the sutures but didn’t add any more, seemingly happy with them. Chloe handed the retractor off and lifted the small intestine with her hand, rolling it until her work was on display.    
  
“You did good,” Dr. Archer said, briefly looking up at her. She added no more sutures but added a patch over them. The stitches would dissolve on their own anyway. Chloe gently put the small intestine back where it belonged and straightened her spine, looking up at the attending for her next directions.    
  
“Get the suction again and just follow my hand. I’m gonna flush the cavity to make sure we have all the blood and bacteria out. After that, it’s just a waiting game.”   
  
Chloe picked up a new suction, catching the water that was deposited into the surgical field after a few seconds.    
  
When all was said and done, Chloe was more relieved to be done with the surgery than anything else. Once Dr. Archer was finished closing Chloe pulled off her gown and gloves and made for the scrub room, where she pulled off her mask and scrub cap.    
  
“You did good in there. Better than some of the other interns who have cycled through over the years. Granted, I’ve seen worse,” Dr. Archer said when she came in. Chloe would’ve thanked her but she was mentally exhausted from the last two hours. The attending took her silence for an answer and continued. “Start her on antibiotics. That bacteria was in there for a while between how long it took to get to the hospital and then when we found it. She should wake up in an hour or so. She’s young, so that helps.”   
  
Chloe listened quietly, rubbing the back of her neck as she watched the patient being wheeled out of the OR through the window connecting the two rooms. She eventually hummed in response just to let the other doctor know that she was heard before leaving. Following the nurses to the ICU. When the little girl was all settled in, Chloe pulled a chair over to the side of her bed, sat down, and waited. She didn’t really know what for. She didn’t think she wanted to know. Half an hour had gone by before something happened, and nothing about it was good. The heart monitor started beeping too fast first. Then her blood pressure bottomed out.    
  
“Hey!” Chloe yelled until a nurse came running in. “Page Archer and get me a crash cart.”   
  
She didn’t think she needed it just yet but thought it was better to be prepared.    
  
“I paged her twice,” the nurse said as she came back in, pulling a crash cart behind her. Chloe was too busy watching the monitors, looking for any change. She blindly reached for the paddles and held them up even though they weren’t even charged.   
  
When her rhythm changed, Chloe shocked her. She did it again when nothing improved. Dr. Archer came in just before Chloe shocked her for a third time and took over.    
  
“What happened?”   
  
“Uhm- her.. her pressure bottomed out and her heart rate spiked and then slowed and I can’t get it back down.”   
  
“Did you get her on antibiotics like I said?”   
  
“Yeah, as soon as she was all set up in here. Could there be an infection?”   
  
Chloe got no answer. Dr. Archer pulled her stethoscope out and listened to the patient’s heart and lungs before pulling it back around her neck, reaching for the paddles as Chloe did minutes before. She watched the scene unfolding before her. The attending shocked her again. No change. They upped the voltage and shocked her again. Still no change.    
  
“Start compressions.”   
  
Chloe leaned forward and positioned her hands over one another against the girl’s chest and pressed down in a rhythm. Her heart rate had been slow before but it was slowly getting into a normal rhythm and Chloe was worried it was only because of the compressions.    
  
Dr. Archer looked up at the monitor for a few seconds and then pulled the blanket down to reveal the incision. It wasn’t bleeding but there was red around the edges and although there’s swelling with any major surgery, there was too much swelling.    
  
“We didn’t get it quick enough, did we? There’s an infection?” Chloe asked, slightly out of breath from doing the compressions. Dr. Archer didn’t answer. She moved towards the head of the hospital bed and looked at the bag that had the antibiotics in it briefly and then stepped back and looked at Chloe.    
  
“We’ve shocked her four times and her heart won’t stabilize. Ease off on the compressions for a second.”   
  
Chloe didn’t stop.    
  
She kept pushing and relaxing and pushing and relaxing. Over and over while Dr. Archer just stared at her.    
  
“Dr. Price,” she warned, something firm behind her words.    
  
“I can’t just stop. We can’t just stop.”   
  
Dr. Archer at least looked like she pitied the intern. It was the first hint of emotion she’d seen from the attending since they met. She took over compressions after another minute or two, forcing Chloe to step back and watch. The compressions were normal at first but they slowly tapered off until Dr. Archer wasn’t doing them anymore either. They both watched the heart monitor and saw her heart rate slow again.    
  
“Can’t we take her back into surgery and do.. something?” Chloe asked in a rush.    
  
“Nothing we do is gonna help. Her body is weak from the accident and surgery, it’s not strong enough to fight the infection. There’s only so much we could do.”   
  
Chloe was rendered silent and went back to watching the monitor. She was more upset that no one was trying, that it seemed like Dr. Archer was just giving up. The beeping slowed and slowed until it stopped and was replaced by a long continuous sound. Chloe stormed out of the room and leaned against the nurse’s desk, both hands holding her face. She didn’t hear the beeping stop or Dr. Archer approaching her from behind.    
  
“Price-”    
  
“I just killed a ten year old girl.”   
  
“Chloe-”   
  
The intern didn’t bother staying to listen to whatever coddling she was going to get. She’d already turned her back and was walking away. This is why she hated PEDs. She could handle the adults who never woke up. They’d lived. It was the kids that made Chloe want to switch to an easier specialty. She couldn’t handle watching a life end so quickly. She was ten. She hadn’t lived yet, and now she never would. She’d never go to high school or college or get married.    
  
Chloe wandered through the halls for a while, trying to shake the feeling of killing someone from her bones. It was almost eight when Rachel found her by radiology.    
  
“Hey! We’ve all been looking for you, rounds start in ten minutes.”   
  
“I killed a nine year old girl,” Chloe said, giving no indication that she heard what Rachel said. Rachel, for her part, didn’t say anything but she wore that look that Chloe hated. Like she was thinking too hard to make sure she didn’t say something wrong.    
  
“I hate PEDs,” she muttered when the silence stretched out too long.    
  
  
  
_Deep down, everyone wants to believe they can be hardcore. But being hardcore isn't just about being tough - it's about acceptance. Sometimes you have to give yourself permission to not be hardcore for once. You don't have to be tough every minute of every day. It's okay to let down your guard. In fact, there are moments when it's the best thing you can possibly do - as long as you choose your moments wisely._


End file.
